The Right to Redefine Marriage?

The main argument proposed by those seeking to redefine marriage so that same-sex couples can be legally declared married is that homosexual persons are being unjustly denied a fundamental right. Everyone has a fundamental right to marry — the argument goes — but homosexuals are denied this right.

But this argument simply begs the question; it presupposes a particular — and false — answer to the question: What is marriage? A right to marry does not give people the right to compel everyone else to treat an entirely different kind of relationship they might have as if it were marriage.

The state does not create marriage, but should recognize and promote it. Prior to any pronouncement by a judge or legislator, men and women fall in love, long to become one — bodily, emotionally and spiritually — in the kind of union that would be extended and unfolded in procreating and rearing children together. This is a distinctive way in which men and women flourish — precisely as man and woman, as complementary persons. And this is the kind of relationship — not to be confused with a romantic relationship together with cohabiting, with no intrinsic orientation to children — in which the state has an interest.

Marriage is a multidimensional union: In the marital act, the man and the woman become organically or biologically one — united as the single subject of a single biological action, something not true of sexual acts other than male-female genital intercourse. The bodily, emotional and spiritual union of husband and wife in marriage is not a mere means in relation to children, but is good in itself — and so men and women who cannot procreate can still be married.

At the same time, marriage is intrinsically oriented to procreation, for it is the kind of union that would be naturally fulfilled by procreating and rearing children together, though not every marriage reaches that fruition.

The state has no public interest in romantic relationships as such. But the state does have an interest in recognizing and promoting marriage because the bond of marriage unites men and women to each other and to whatever children may result from the union. Marriage provides the ideal framework in which to conceive, nurture and protect children, and promoting marriage encourages men and women to marry before they conceive children.

So the state’s granting marriage licenses to opposite-sex couples but not same-sex couples is not unjust discrimination — just as it is not unjust for it to refrain from granting marriage licenses to 12-year-olds or to those already married. Like 12-year-olds and those already married, same-sex couples are simply unable to form the unique kind of relationship that marriage is and that the state has a public interest in promoting.

Same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated with respect to the purpose of marriage laws; they are dissimilar precisely in that respect in which the state has an interest.

Equal rights for all? Yes, absolutely. But that does not imply a right to suppress from public discourse the recognition of what is specific and distinctive of marriage.

Then you are damn right that they are inferior and should be rejected.

Posted by Mike Donnelly on Friday, Apr 12, 2013 7:29 AM (EST):

The Professor of Bioethics ? What is Bioethics? There is no such thing, he’s either a Philosophy or Theology teacher. I hate when frauds try to sound all science-y as if adding Bio to his field of expertise is going to get you somewhere. He has a bunch of degrees, but in what field they won’t tell you

“He received a B.A. from the University of Dallas, an M.A. from Niagara University, and a Ph.D. from Marquette University. He taught for eleven years at the University of St. Thomas in Houston before coming to Franciscan University in 1992.”

Bioethics, what non living things are concerned about ethics ? So you have to explain you are focused on the living ones? How far my undergraduate school has fallen.

Posted by R.C. on Wednesday, Apr 10, 2013 9:28 PM (EST):

Very odd.

Ryan, you state that, “both of you are arguing that there are subjective definitions of sin…,”

Did you mean to say objective? That would be closer to what I was arguing, and since you’re trying to restate my argument, I hope you meant to say objective. There are subjective definitions of everything I suppose, but the more subjective they are, the more unhelpful. One must communicate with words having crisply-defined meanings, or one cannot communicate…if by “communicate” we mean convey an intended meaning from the mind of one person to the mind of another without alteration.

Of course there is objectively such a thing as sin; a man who denies there is evil in the world has neither opened his eyes to read a newspaper nor closed them to examine his own heart.

And likewise one need not rely on subjectivity when saying that so-and-so is really, actually a good Catholic, or a less-good Catholic, or a downright rotten Catholic, or such a desperately un-Catholic Catholic that their Catholicity is scarcely recognizable as such. All that is required of us is that we actually be well-informed about the person’s behaviors and opinions, and that we know what the standard is for behavior and belief which marks Catholicism. With some belief systems—Hinduism, Anglicanism, Agnosticism—there is an intrinsic ambiguity about where the center-of-gravity for that system lies. But with Catholicism there is no such ambiguity, because of the Magisterium. Consequently we can compare persons (most importantly, ourselves) against the standard quite meaningfully and objectively.

As for natural and unnatural: Well, is the Saturn V rocket a natural feature, or a man-made one? Is there anything subjective about the assertion that it is not natural? Were the smiles worn by Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich as they sat together for a television commercial a decade or so ago natural, or affected? Is it not entirely reasonable to think they were probably a bit strained? Is the current state of the East River in New York its natural state, or is it polluted? Isn’t it merely stating the obvious to say that the tin cans and soap bubbles weren’t put there by nature, but by human activity? There are several definitions of “natural” and for each it has its appropriate context and antonym. If one transitions from one context to another without informing the reader, then that would be the error of equivocation. But if one does not equivocate, then to discern whether a thing is natural or not according to a particular definition of “natural” is merely evidence that one knows the definition and how to apply it.

Then you go on to use the word “equivocation.” Indeed you keep on using that word. But to borrow a phrase from Inigo Montoya, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

I say that because you didn’t give any example of equivocation on my part; and then you went on to make an assertion about my opinions that not only doesn’t demonstrate that I have equivocated, but can’t logically follow from an equivocation. It is hard to avoid the impression that you’re using the word “equivocate” when you actually mean something else.

Furthermore, the assertion about my opinions is false…or, at least, it’s “falsey.” It certainly isn’t right; but it doesn’t quite rise to the level of “wrong.” For I, of course, hold Catholic dogma in high esteem. And I hold “secular matters”—changing the oil in my van, voting, balancing my checkbook—in high esteem as well. But claiming that “Catholic doctrine is superior to secular matters,” is like claiming that Robert’s Rules of Order are superior to the game of baseball. And I would never say that, because to me that sounds like nonsense.

Ryan, I don’t know if you’ve merely gotten in a hurry—Lord knows I’ve had precious little time in the last four days to come back here and give the kind of exhaustive replies I’d like—and thus careless in how you’re using words or rephrasing what you believe my opinions to be. Maybe that’s all it is.

But I worry the problem is really that you genuinely don’t know what I think. They say if you want to understand a man you must first walk a mile in his moccasins; I think that goes double if you want to debate him. For of course it makes no sense to debate him, starting from your own assumptions. You have to debate him starting from his assumptions.

You can’t use all of his assumptions, of course, for one of his assumptions is that he’s right and you aren’t! But what you’re really doing is basing your argument on the authority of the beliefs you and he have in common, and then working up from there to show him that some other beliefs he’d based on those assumptions don’t actually follow. You show him a contradiction in his worldview, not between his and yours, but between his and his.

And that is why I started off purely with secular, worldly, “practical” observations.

But I never got very far with the whole chain of reasoning because every time I stated a secular, worldly, practical observation—and I didn’t get a chance to articulate more than one or two—you insisted that somehow what I was saying was tainted by reliance on revelation, on assumptions about the supernatural, or whatever. There was no sign of any such thing in the words I used, so you were reading it into my words. You were doing “eisegesis,” not “exegesis.” And that remains your approach, so far as I can see.

And thus I am stymied. I can say whatever I like, but I cannot communicate because you hear whatever you’re expecting to hear, rather than what I say. It’s a bit of a let-down.

But, respectfully: If you want to continue, go back and give what I’ve said thus far a friendly reading rather than a suspicious one. Do me the credit of thinking that I think like you—and after all, why shouldn’t I be able to do just that? Why should my being a Catholic prevent me from agreeing with you about all sorts of things, from the color of the (uncloudy, daytime) sky to the required sample-set size for statistical relevance?

And I speak as someone who’s stood on both sides of atheism/theism, and on both sides of Protestantism/Catholicism (with a bit of wannabe Jew from time to time) as well! So I have a pretty broad perspective. I have walked a mile in your moccasins. (Indeed, you walking a mile in my moccasins might be a mite more challenging if you’ve never been a serious adult theist before. But it isn’t anything a man with some imagination and a sense of empathy can’t overcome.)

Anyway, give it some thought. We could communicate seriously and fruitfully here, and come away with mutual respect whether or not either of us finds the other’s argument persuasive. But if you must insist (dogmatically?) that my words mean other than their intended (and plain) meaning, then we will never get anywhere.

Posted by savvy on Wednesday, Apr 10, 2013 9:10 PM (EST):

Ryan Louis Smith,

The marriage issue, is not about who has the authority, but what makes sense. Marriage is a public, not a private institution.

Have you thought about the meaning of marriage and realised it is unjust not to allow same-sex couples to marry?

How have you realized same-sex marriage will benefit society?

Do you think mother and fathers contribute different things to a child’s upbringing?

Do you think ideally a child should be raised by its biological mother and father?

Is Marriage

a) Marriage is either a conjugal union of a man and a woman designed to unite husband and wife to each other and to any children who may come from their union

or

b) it is a relationship for the mutual benefit of adults which the state recognizes and to which it grants certain benefits.

You take an all or nothing approach, which is quite militant. I stand by my statements, not promoting something is not the same as banning it.

Your arguments are a play on emotions, since you are not good with debate and reasoning.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Tuesday, Apr 9, 2013 11:37 PM (EST):

RC and Savvy—both of you are arguing that there are subjective definitions of sin, “good” Catholics, “natural and unnatural,” and so on. All the equivocation boils down to is that you assert that Catholic doctrine is superior to secular matters. You are both very good at equivocation but it is still bulls**t.——
I state again: Catholic “authority” has no constitutional right over any other worldview. It happens to be making the most noise right now, but it is specifically stated that no one religion will be favored over any other. The constitution acknowledges that there are many religions and (implicitly) non-religious people, and limits itself to governing secular society.
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It doesn’t matter whether Catholics declare homosexuality is a sin and that same sex marriage is anathema to the Catholic faith. The government is not bound to put ANY religion as its base for secular laws.
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All states will have to recognized same-sex marriages in this generation or the next one. Once again, God is not making a difference in our secular existence.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Tuesday, Apr 9, 2013 9:50 PM (EST):

Savvy—so many comments!
=====No, they are not. God bites itself is a shrinking population, since they lack influence in the church, where it matters the most.
++++++++
What does that mean? Please explain “God bits itself…”
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Re: Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 9:33 PM (EDT):
++++++++
My point is that your belief in Go is based on circular reasoning.
=====That should read not promoting something, is not the same as wanting to ban it.
++++++++
That’s like saying that not promoting abortion is not the same as wanting to ban it. If you’re not promoting abortion, but not wanting to ban it, then what good is your neutrality?
========It should also read Dog bites itself.
++++++++
Oh, now I understand—I’m a member of the Dyslectic Untied Church of Dog too!
========
to be continued….

Posted by savvy on Monday, Apr 8, 2013 3:45 PM (EST):

America is not as secular as atheists think.

Christianity As State Religion Supported By One-Third Of Americans, Poll Finds

“The relatively high level of support for establishing Christianity as a state religion may be reflective of dissatisfaction with the current balance of religion and politics. Respondents to the poll were more likely to say that the U.S. has gone too far in keeping religion and government separate than they were to say religion and government are too mixed, by a 37-29 percent margin. Only 17 percent said that the country has struck a good balance in terms of the separation of church and state.”

A vote for xyz does not automatically, mean supporting xyz. Promoting something, like Catholics of choice, does is different from a person who says, they are undecided, but do not endorse any concept.

It’s like a refusal to promote xyz in secular culture, does not amount to banning it. Those making this argument, are generally insecure in their own positions, hence live in fear of others.

Posted by R.C. on Monday, Apr 8, 2013 2:42 PM (EST):

Oh, one more thing really quick:

One should always avoid the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.

But it happens that “Catholic” is one of the few words in history for which it is possible to provide a pretty objective definition. One can fuzz it up a little by qualifying between “bad Catholic” and “good Catholic,” in the fashion of “Nancy Pelosi and Martin Luther are bad Catholics” and “Pope Francis and St. Francis of Assisi are good Catholics.”

But the authoritative nature of Catholic teaching permits that to be an objective statement about the relationship between an individual’s opinions and the teaching, whereas in most classifications you have to get a sample of “self-identified Whatevers,” find a center-of-gravity, and measure how close a particular individual is to that center-of-gravity.

So while it would be false to say that “No Catholic can advocate for legalized abortion,” it is important to notice that, objectively, no Catholic who does so can be used as a standard for what constitutes a good Catholic. Indeed, many prominent “little-c catholic” politicians have been barred from communion for doing so, and those who assist others in procuring abortions incur an latae sententiae excommunication from the Church.

Posted by R.C. on Monday, Apr 8, 2013 2:20 PM (EST):

Ryan Louis Smith:

I can only make a brief reply at the moment. Sorry for my absence; I had to travel yesterday and the on-the-bus Internet was not functioning, which is why I’ve been silent.

First, you’re Aaron, correct?

Second, folks who wrote things far more objectionable than anything you’ve written here have not been “blacklisted”; but I’ve seen technical issues, over-sensitive spam filters, and delayed posting mess things up plenty before for myself as well as others. You’ve seen the tomes I tend to write; there was one time that a 5-parter I wrote got posted in the wrong order with the middle part missing. Very frustrating. Anyhow, please be aware that there isn’t some “heretic detector” that blacklists dissenting views. I don’t know why you’re being forced to use a new ID but you’ve been less prone to profanity or anger than some other folks who weren’t prevented from commenting day after day. So I don’t think it’s that.

Third, I may get around challenging what you’re identifying as the null hypothesis and the belief that the supernatural and the natural differ in the ability of different observers to observe the same phenomena. But it’s a big topic and an ancillary topic, and I don’t want to take the time if it isn’t required and won’t advance the primary topic.

Regarding what is “unnatural” re: homosexuality: There are several definitions of “natural” and “unnatural”; your reference to animal behavior shows that you’re using one particular definition; but that isn’t the relevant one that folks arguing from Natural Law are using in making moral arguments. So it’s a problem of equivocation.

...aaand, that’s all I can take time for at the moment. More later, and I’ll try to catch up with how far you and Savvy have moved the ball.

Posted by savvy on Monday, Apr 8, 2013 1:27 PM (EST):

It should also read Dog bites itself.

Posted by savvy on Monday, Apr 8, 2013 1:27 PM (EST):

That should read not promoting something, is not the same as wanting to ban it.

No, they are not. God bites itself is a shrinking population, since they lack influence in the church, where it matters the most.

“If all Catholics wanted to shun secular laws they don’t believe in, they will have to enclose themselves in separate communities—much like Jim Jones and Heaven’s Gate.”

No promoting something is not the same as wanting to ban it. Write this down.

“And just who defines the norm?”

The norm, has already been defined, by the objective laws of nature. Nobody else needs to do it. One can only reject it, but cannot change it.

“Catholics are grossed out by the idea ANY sexual attraction that is separate from procreation.”

We are equally grossed out by procreation being separated from sexual attraction. Like Henry V111 who wanted wives just to have kids, but did away with them, when he couldn’t.

It’s a BOTH/And.

“That’s horse sh*t, and you know it.”

No, it’s not. Since the whole concept of orientation is very recent. So homosexuality as an identity is a new concept, as an action, it’s an old concept.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 10:10 PM (EST):

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 9:51 PM (EDT):
“A loving relationship is better than obedience to a religion that considers you a sinner by default.”
Being gay is not sin, being in a loving relationship is not a sin. Only engaging in homosexual relations is a sin. So no they are not sinners by default.
*****************
That’s horse sh*t, and you know it.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 10:07 PM (EST):

“This is a deviation from the norm.”———————
And just who defines the norm? ———————
In secular society, marriage is the recognition that two people are committed to love and support each other, for as long as the mutual contract is acceptable to both partners. The legal obligation of a marriage licence was instigated to prevent interracial marriage:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_license
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It’s been written before that marriage between elderly couples where (the female) partners are infertile is still a sacrament. In any case, it is not certain that a “properly” married couple will have children until it is discovered that one, or both partners are infertile—there are so many Catholics who morn their infertility!
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Catholics are grossed out by the idea ANY sexual attraction that is separate from procreation. (I still don’t understand why NFP is acceptable to Catholics in this respect.)

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 9:37 PM (EST):

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 9:16 PM (EDT):
Ryan Louis Smith,
Catholics are not single issue voters. And yes the Catholics who support faux marriage and murder of the unborn are not good Catholics.
.....
My point, sir! Catholics are not single issue voters and Catholics who support “faux marriage and the ‘murder’ of the unborn are not ‘good Catholics.’ They are, however good secular voters. That’s your problem—“good” Catholics are a shrinking population.
.........
I’ve written before—secular matters deal with people who have different religions/philosophies, etc. Secular law—in theory—must be neutral on religions/philosophies so that people of different religions/philosophies can live within secular society. Secular laws deal with how people interact with each other—not how they interact with “god.”
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If all Catholics wanted to shun secular laws they don’t believe in, they will have to enclose themselves in separate communities—much like Jim Jones and Heaven’s Gate.

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 8:51 PM (EST):

“A loving relationship is better than obedience to a religion that considers you a sinner by default.”

Being gay is not sin, being in a loving relationship is not a sin. Only engaging in homosexual relations is a sin. So no they are not sinners by default.

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 8:33 PM (EST):

“The presumption that there is a superior being begs the question of your conclusion in your reasoning. The existence of a superior is a spiritual belief that varies among different people and cultures. We are a diverse society. “

Your point is?

“Also, homosexuality has been observed among other animal species—so it is not “unnatural.”

This is a deviation from the norm. Deriving pleasure from food and sex is a survival instinct with the purpose of passing on our genes. Homosexuality does not do is, hence its not natural.

In every culture, sexual pleasure is directly linked to procreation and the building of families.

It’s only the modern West that argues it’s not. Even in ancient Greece, where homosexuality was tolerated, it was seen as separate from marriage and family.

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 8:16 PM (EST):

Ryan Louis Smith,

Catholics are not single issue voters. And yes the Catholics who support faux marriage and murder of the unborn are not good Catholics.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 1:03 PM (EST):

“The existence of a superior being or not does not negate the fact that these facts can be examined by science and the objective laws of nature.”
)))))
(((((
Again, no argument. The presumption that there is a superior being begs the question of your conclusion in your reasoning. The existence of a superior is a spiritual belief that varies among different people and cultures. We are a diverse society.
.
Also, homosexuality has been observed among other animal species—so it is not “unnatural.”

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:55 PM (EST):

“No, simply that secular beliefs are no more binding that religious beliefs are.”
.
True, but votes are more binding to politicians. Some Catholics voted for Obama, there are “Catholics for Choice,” and there are homosexual Catholics coming out. (And please—don’t put up that “no true Catholic” bit!) How much their Catholicism will influence their voting decisions will be compromised by their secular needs and wants. A loving relationship is better than obedience to a religion that considers you a sinner by default.

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:50 PM (EST):

“I’m not saying that RC’s observations are not true. In fact, they are probably the basis of most religion, which is flaw in the sense that there must be a superior being because there was no science to examine or explain observations in nature. (Argument from Personal Incredulity)”

The existence of a superior being or not does not negate the fact that these facts can be examined by science and the objective laws of nature.

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:48 PM (EST):

Ryan Louis Smith,

Your basic premise is wrong. Religion dealing with the spiritual does not mean that they negate the physical. Unless one is a strictly a spiritualist . You are setting up a false opposition.

“You do not have licence to impose those “thou shalt not” rules on others.”

Neither do you. Everybody is free to offer a view or refute them. Some people like to blame others for the conflict they experience with their own conscience. Hence, they want their views silenced in the public square.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:46 PM (EST):

“The issue here is that the null hypothesis has already been disproven, by the scientific questions that R.C. posed to you. Ones that you refused to answer, by making excuses, that the one posing them was religious.”
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I’m not saying that RC’s observations are not true. In fact, they are probably the basis of most religion, which is flaw in the sense that there must be a superior being because there was no science to examine or explain observations in nature. (Argument from Personal Incredulity)
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I’m saying that a religious conclusion should be legally binding in a diverse secular society. The null hypothesis that there is no God, afterlife, etc. has not been disproved.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:37 PM (EST):

My basic premise is that secularism deals with this life—womb to tomb, birth to earth—while religion deals with souls and the concepts of god(s) and an afterlife that is not evident in secular living.
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Secularism, in this country, allows for religious and ethnic diversity. The Constitution expressly states that no one religion will be favored over any other.
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You are free to have mixed-sexed marriage in the same way you’re free to not use contraception, not have premarital or extramarital sex, not to have an abortion—even to save your life. You do not have licence to impose those “thou shalt not” rules on others.

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:36 PM (EST):

Ryan Louis Smith,

“My statements on scientific method are not false. The null hypothesis stands until it is disproved.”

The issue here is that the null hypothesis has already been disproven, by the scientific questions that R.C. posed to you. Ones that you refused to answer, by making excuses, that the one posing them was religious.

“Are you suggesting that atheism is more popular than religion?”

No, simply that secular beliefs are no more binding that religious beliefs are.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:24 PM (EST):

Savvy—you keep accusing of making “false assumptions” and suggesting I move to another country. I find that offensive.
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My statements on scientific method are not false. The null hypothesis stands until it is disproved.
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And I find it odd that you suggest I’m appealing to popularity in light of your statement, “If a million people believe in something, it remains a belief unless there is evidence to prove otherwise.”
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Are you suggesting that atheism is more popular than religion?

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:15 PM (EST):

Ryan,

I have heard the arguments for same-sex marriage. I do not find them convincing.

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:11 PM (EST):

Ryan Louis Smith,

There is no need to resort to name-calling. I am not hostile towards you, just trying to figure out your line of reasoning.

“I’m stating that in scientific method the null hypothesis is considered a basic premise until it is disproved by positive evidence.”

In this case, you keep making arguments from an appeal to popularity, rather than any basic premise.

What is your basic premise?

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:02 PM (EST):

BTY—I tried to post an article listing reasons for same sex marriage, but the link is blacklisted. Try looking it up on the web.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 12:00 PM (EST):

Savy—no, I am not making a false assumption that atheism is non-biased. I’m stating that in scientific method the null hypothesis is considered a basic premise until it is disproved by positive evidence.
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You are certainly hostile to people who don’t agree with you. Why don’t you move to Saudi Arabia, where blasphemers are jailed and killed outright?

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 11:44 AM (EST):

Ryan Louis Smith,

You are making the false assumption that only atheism is non-biased and has a place in the public square. Perhaps you should move to China, where there are no exemptions for anybody, including yourself.

Posted by Ryan Louis Smith on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 11:39 AM (EST):

This is to continue the conversation with RC. My identity has been blacklisted, so I changed it. Looks like by spammed post will not be published!

RC
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You don’t mention God in your comments, but you identify yourself first and foremost as a Catholic. You are biased to conclude, whatever you observe, that God created it for a purpose which has been infallibly defined by the Church. If you can’t accept that God and the Church have nothing to do with the universe—which is the null hypothesis—then your logic is flawed because your premises have not been validated.
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In secular terms, “God” is not a valid term because the meaning of “God” varies among different observers. Therefore, “God” is neither a cause or a variable. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Constitution, so long as practice of that religion does not do an injustice to people within and outside the faith.

Posted by savvy on Sunday, Apr 7, 2013 11:35 AM (EST):

Aaron,

You are also biased. Civil marriage already differs from the Catholic definition of marriage. Hence R.C. is NOT talking about the Catholic definition of marriage. You are falsely assuming he is.

Secular experiences, like religious experiences are not independent data. It’s useful in shaping group identity, but not in extracting independent data.

If a million people believe in something, it remains a belief unless there is evidence to prove otherwise.

Your beliefs are no more binding than religious beliefs are.

You have attacked others for being religious, but have failed to come up with any reasons FOR same-sex marriage.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 11:27 PM (EST):

RC—It’s getting late and I should probably get some sleep.
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You are making statements without references to support them, and I’m pretty sure I can come up with statement with references, about what is best for “the children” and “society.”
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Come to think of it, most people don’t worry about statistics and studies. Most people deal with their secular experiences. You have your secular experiences, which includes your experience with Catholicism. I have my secular experiences which don’t include so much experience with religion. You just don’t seem to grasp that there are secular experiences that have no involvement with Catholic faith.
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To clarify—I mean the difference between growing up in Catholic faith and learning about Catholic religion. I understand Catholic religion as another mythology. You believe it is the reason for your life.
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So, stop trying to sound “scientific” about your ideas of marriage and morals, because you are biased. If you were more objective in your observations, you would recognize the difference between the secular and the religious reasoning.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 11:12 PM (EST):

R.C.—I was going to ask you to please cite the sources of your quotations, but that really doesn’t matter.
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You seem to be defending yourself against my idea that you are using your Catholic premises in your reasoning. While I still contend that is true, I still think you’re trying to insist that there are scientific/secular premises that are the same as Catholic premises. That may be somewhat true as well.
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The problem is that Catholic premises and secular premises diverge as knowledge grows in society. You’re assuming “tradition” will last forever, but over time, people change. Adaptation is the essence of evolution and survival of a species. The more we know, the less we believe in superstition.
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You keep pushing Catholic/Christian principles as the measuring stick for human behavior. I keep trying to tell you that there are other measuring sticks. Why should the Catholic definition of “marriage” be the law of the land?

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 9:47 PM (EST):

Oh, and don’t worry about the spam filter thing. It happens to me all the time on these comment threads. But, yeah, sometimes you have to wait for a whole weekend.

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 9:43 PM (EST):

Whoops, I made an error in how I wrote some of that: I meant to say that women engage in more rebound activities if their sexual practices with their ex hadn’t blocked contact to their ex’s semen.

Sorry about that. Homer nods, and all that.

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 9:40 PM (EST):

Aaron,

Here’s an example of one observation in one part of my argument. (It’s very far from the whole argument, so don’t assume that I think the excerpt below proves more than what it explicitly says.)

Show me where, in the following, I’m using “Catholic premises”:

“Semen, when absorbed by a woman’s body, carries neurotransmitters and hormones which have measurable psychological effects on the woman. Among other things, a sense of well-being is increased, and brain-chemistry is altered in ways that produce bonding. Studies show that women who have sex with men wearing condoms are typically less emotionally upset by subsequent breakups than women who have sex with men whose semen is not blocked by barriers; and, they also tend to engage in more ‘rebound’ activities.

For this and other reasons, it seems that sex is bonding-reinforcing on the biochemical level: It wants to produce long-term relationships, and if repeated will keep reinforcing them for the pair’s whole life, which has a long-term impact psychologically and even in the physiology of the brain. It seems, then, that lifelong mate-pairs have some evolutionary advantage. But what?

The best available explanation is that it helps children to be raised by their biological father and their biological mother straight into adulthood and for this bond to persist even beyond adulthood for the grandkids’ sake. There is ample evidence to support this in studying the outcomes of various household structures on outcomes later in life: The kids who don’t get the benefit of the lifelong parental pairing fare worse educationally and in income, report more unhappiness, report more drug use, report more sex partners with shorter relationship durations, are more likely to serve prison time, and are more likely to have psychological problems.”

What, out of all of that, relies upon the reader believing in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, or anything similar?

If, somewhere in what I have just written, I’m relying on a premise that God exists, then, hey you have much more sensitive God-detectors than I do. ‘Cause I’m just not seeing it. That all felt a lot like natural reason to me, even if it was only one link in a hundred-link chain of argument.

As for votes and all that: At the moment, the majority of voters are not in favor of “same-sex marriage” in all of the meanings of the term I described in a previous note (as various state ballot initiatives have amply demonstrated. But I expect (media propaganda being what it is, and low information voters being what they are) that that will change. It doesn’t have any relevance to what’s true, however: Logic is not a matter of majority vote.

So why do you bring it up? Are we conversing about whether there should be “same-sex marriage,” or are we conversing about whether there likely will be? I grant that, as things look, the first duty of Christian parents in the foreseeable future is to have their kids—especially if they happen to have homosexual tendencies and yet remain faithful—adequately prepared for “white” martyrdom. (If you don’t know the term, it means not being thrown to lions, but being denied jobs and subjected to lawsuits and stuff like that.)

But such prognostication is just political horse-race following, and I think America gets more than enough of that from the 24-hour cable news networks. Must we add more to the heap, here?

I’d rather discuss what’s actually right and wise and true and good policy, and argue my opinions from your starting assumptions instead of my own. (It’s the only sensible way to argue, after all…and failing to do so is the mistake I called you out on, when you were saying that the Church should switch opinions to keep members, remember that?)

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 8:12 PM (EST):

RC—my last response is being checked for spam. I don’t think it was offensive, so it might pass—but maybe not till Monday.
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My point is that you have a different idea of “natural reason”—again which you base on Catholic premises. Laws that govern secular society have to deal with what is observed in secular reality. Homosexuality is only a sin if you follow a religion that declares it so. It does no one harm when two consenting adults get married.
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It seems you can’t separate your faith from objective secular matters—not an unusual dilemma. Your problem is that the majority of voters are more accepting of same sex relationships, and it’s votes that get politicians elected.

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 7:44 PM (EST):

Aaron:

I fear that we aren’t going to be able to communicate fruitfully after all. It was important to try, but on this one point of contention it feels as if you are reading someone else’s posts, rather than mine.

At every point you have asserted that I was premising my arguments on the existence of God. At every point I stated I needed only to use natural reason in my arguments.

And, true to my word, when I began to debate on the merits, I did not use God or any other matter of revelation as a premise in my arguments, anywhere. Take a look. Scan what I said.

In fact you seem to think some argument or other of mine references the existence of an afterlife! It’s true, I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting…but I also believe in the existence of black-and-gold late-70’s Trans Ams. In none of my arguments do I rely anywhere on the existence of the afterlife, or of Trans Ams, as a premise. Whose posts are you reading?

Yet you continue to assert that I have littered my arguments with references to God or to things requiring revelation. (Note: I hold with St. Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas that the existence of God, in some of His attributes, can in fact be known without recourse to revelation, by natural logic alone. But we’re not debating theism here, so that isn’t relevant.)

Again, you say my arguments against the imposition of “gay marriage” contain things an atheist would never say, things which require a belief in God or in the sacraments or in the content of divine revelation. I can only state that I have not, because it was not at all required. My views on “gay marriage” are entirely supportable through mere argument from the senses and from logic, which was all I have given you.

Perhaps you could show me a sentence in what I have said, during the part of our exchange which was debating about “gay marriage” on the merits, which requires the existence of God as a premise?

I really don’t think there has been any such thing. And I think that were we to prolong the debate, every point I wished to make would require only the premises an atheist could agree with.

So: Why do you insist that there must be some point in my argument which requires God? Why is that such an article of faith for you? Does your worldview not permit the existence of Christians who’re able to state that 2 plus 2 equals 4 without recourse to a Bible verse? I am a Christian, and I can state that 2 plus 2 equals 4 without lurching for my Bible or Catechism or anything else like that. Does that make you feel as if I’m a mythical beast? I’m no Yeti or Nessie, I assure you!

I don’t know whether this discussion is going to continue or not. But if it helps any other readers, here was my plan going forward:

1. Lay a foundation, from a biologist’s or neurologist’s or naturalist’s perspective, for the role of pleasure in the life of an organism, whether human or animal, and the implications for sexual pleasure and its telos specifically (with analogies to the pleasure of eating and it’s telos, and comparisons to the Romans’ apocryphal binge-and-purge habits and the disorder of “pica”).

2. List some of the relevant biochemical processes associated with coitus.

3. Demonstrate from those processes that the telos of sex—the evolved directedness, if you like—is not merely to produce children, but to produce stable families for their upbringing and their integration into the broader family of society.

4. Discuss the psychology of erotic love as influenced by the interaction of sexual biochemistry with the personalities of people in all societies around the world, and how that also informs us about the definition, character, and telos of marriage and family: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

5. List the moral limitations on the use of force to which atheists and Christians can agree equally, and show their relevance in the legal system America inherited from England, the Declaration, the Constitution, and American law to the present day.

6. Connect all of that to the “bundled contracts” which are currently applied to marriage in U.S. law.

7. Talk a bit about what (I am told by competent attorneys) constitutes a “compelling state interest” in U.S. law.

8. Talk a bit about the fertility rate in the U.S. and its implications for the welfare state and the economy, and about studies regarding childrearing outcomes, and what all of that implies for the U.S. government’s compelling state interest in subsidizing the traditional family structure.

9. Talk a bit about (what competent attorneys say is) the recent history of equal protection cases and what constitutes a specially protected class of citizens in U.S. law, and how that applies to the very low threshold for establishing the legitimacy of incentives where there is a compelling state interest.

10. Point out the biological facts which make homosexual partnerships, however prolonged, contrary to (or, at best, irrelevant to) the compelling state interest.

11. Describe some of the recent cases in the U.S. and Canada where free exercise of religion has been suppressed or threatened by the state forcibly backing up the whims of the secular left, and the implications should everything the secular left desires be granted to them by the courts on the matter of “gay marriage.” (Note: This is the first point in the argument where I would have to describe a religious belief. But I would not be using it as a premise. I would instead be describing it “from outside,” as it were; i.e., even an atheist can observe as an “outsider” that Christians think abortion to be a form of legalized murder targeting the most helpless, even if some atheists do not share that view.)

12. Describe some of the existing cases and academic papers wherein existing or anticipated court rulings in favor of “gay marriage” are being used (or are planned to be used) as precedent upon which to build rights to pedophelia, ephebophilia, bigamy and other group marriages, and the like.

13. Fill in any gaps where needed.

And, again, I did not anticipate arguing from any matter of revelation at any point throughout the process.

Having laid out that game plan, let me return to your last responses, Aaron:

You say, “Again, secular laws are in place to regulate humans in society so they can live in relative freedom without doing harm to others…”

...and I more or less agree with that, although I would try to be more precise. I would say that people intrinsically have just moral authority to use force against other people in only limited circumstances; namely, to defend innocent persons (themselves, or others) against wrongful uses of force (or fraud, which is intellectual forcing) which violate their rights (including privacy, by the way!) or their intrinsic human dignity. I would go on from that to state that human beings also intrinsically have a right to hire employees (delegating to them some of their, the employers’, just authority) and to form political associations.

When a nation forms a political union and hires employees to exercise force on their behalf (delegating to them their just authority to use force in the defense of the innocent), that’s called “constituting a government.” It follows that governments, which obtain their just authority to use force by delegation from the people (or, in the case of a federal union, from the states and the people), have fairly limited authority to use force (whether in the waging of wars or the criminalizing of behaviors). It also follows that citizens of a country have both unalienable natural rights and merely “civil” rights, the latter including behaviors which in themselves might be morally wrong (and thus not a natural right) but which force cannot be justly used to circumscribe (which means the government can’t justly outlaw it, which makes it a civil right).

When I bring up the question of what sexuality is—something I intended to discuss from a purely naturalistic perspective—you seem to think I’m about to foist Catholic doctrine on you. Why? Are the only Catholics you know a crowd of pushy catechists?

Likewise what marriage is. I don’t need to whip out a book of theology; I intended only to whip out a book of history, a bit of love poetry, some psychology, some biochemistry, and some sociology. Are atheists incapable of all these things, that you ascribe them to be exclusively the province of Theists? (Don’t be offended! That’s a joke, not a poke. The question is purely rhetorical: Obviously there are plenty of atheist psychologists, biochemists, sociologists, historians. And some globs of self-replicating cells have even evolved the ability to write love poetry to other globs of self-replicating cells, too! ...although I’m sure it was only in pursuit of self-replication.)

So when you say, “You’re trying to force the Catholic definition of marriage into secular law…” I answer, “No, I am hoping that secular law will not continue to drift further and further from what helps humans in our society to live in relative freedom without doing harm to others.” Isn’t there room for common ground, in that?

You say, “The Church does not seem to recognize those secular privacy rights.” But that’s entirely unsupported (and in fact entirely false). The intrinsic dignity of a person and the limitations on the just authority of the government to use force amount to a Catholic requirement not only of privacy rights as civil rights, but in certain instances privacy rights as unalienable human rights.

So I’m not sure where that assertion came from. Perhaps you think that not establishing “gay marriage” in the U.S. is a violation of the privacy rights of homosexuals? But that doesn’t logically follow, even from an atheist’s perspective: “Homosexuals have intrinsic dignity which implies a right not to have the government intrude on their sex lives forcibly…. Therefore, it follows that the government must first register all long-term homosexual couples with the state, and then use force to violate the religious freedoms of others!” I stipulate the first half…but can you see how the second half doesn’t quite follow?

“You’re trying to force the Catholic definition of marriage into secular law.” Nope. I’m not. If I were, you’d see me using force (which you don’t) and violating the teaching of the Church (which doesn’t allow sacraments to be forced on anyone). I’m not talking about the sacrament of marriage at all. I’m just talking about sex and family and marriage and procreation and legal contracts and the like from a purely secular perspective.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 5:40 PM (EST):

RC—This should be my last round:Finally, I think there are two missing issues here dealing with underlying assumptions:

1. What is marriage? What is its definition, its character, and its telos?

2. What is human sexuality? What is its definition, its character, and its telos?

For the topic to be thoroughly discussed, we’d have to exhaustively deal with those things.

Last note: Will you grant that I, in starting this argument on the merits, have NOT ONCE needed to reference an item of revelation?—————-
Those questions are NOT the business of secular government. There are laws of privacy that prevent the law from bursting into the bedroom without warrant because some people are grossed out by what they suspect you are doing. The Church does not seem to recognize those secular privacy rights.
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You’re trying to force the Catholic definition of marriage into secular law. That may be justified by your Catholic faith, but it is not secular justice.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 5:28 PM (EST):

RC—to continue:
I personally don’t give a damn about details of Catholic faith about classifications of guns. I do care about the health and freedoms of secular life—mass shootings in public places, use of contraception, abortion to save the life of the mother.
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Again, secular laws are in place to regulate humans in society so they can live in relative freedom without doing harm to others. Since people are multi-dimensional, their philosophy will influence their secular decisions. That’s why the U.S. doesn’t have a king; it has a government with checks and balances so that people don’t have to have the same philosophy to live in the secular society of our country.
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So, our conversation is still based on the difference between “life after death” and life from “birth to earth.” You’re other comments are just trying to “justify” why your (Catholic)philosophy should be secular philosophy. Waste of time and digital space.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 5:11 PM (EST):

RC—Continued:And you seem to assert that their arguments should automatically be treated differently even if the argument happens to be the same argument, purely because of who is saying it. Is it your opinion that the least taint of theism makes the argument (or the arguer) an outcast, unfit for civil society?———
You seem to think people are one-dimensional. You, for example are a Catholic and secular. On this site, you are making arguments based on Catholic premises. You also are mixing Catholic doctrine with your view of secularism.
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I am not a religious person—what we do have in common is our existence in the secular society. Your faith is very dear to you, but Catholic doctrines interfere with secular interests, and there are people who do not share Catholic faith. Again, it’s as simple as that. Religion is concerned with “living souls,” and secular matters deal with living in this life.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 5:02 PM (EST):

RC—You still seem to hold a perspective that draws a strong categorical difference between philosophical and logical arguments employed by a Catholic (or, presumably, any practitioner of any form of Christianity or Judaism), and philosophical and logical arguments employed by an atheist or agnostic.——
There is a categorical difference. Judeo-Christian philosophical arguments are based on the premise that a particular god exists, that the particular god is the only god, and that god set up rules by which believers should live by in order to be united with that god “after death.”
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Atheist/agnostic philosophical arguments do not presume the existence of such a god that has the authority to dictate how to live. God is not in the frame of reference—period.
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We both may apply the same rules of logic, but we disagree on the basic premise from which our logic is based. What you call “revealed” knowledge is not experienced by everyone. Our own experience is secular—womb to tomb, birth to earth.
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To be continued…

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 1:52 PM (EST):

(Aaron, that was my last post of this overall response. Feel free to chime in now.)

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 1:51 PM (EST):

Aaron,

My final statement is actually an invitation. I believe that, of the various definitions of “same-sex” marriage, most or all of them will be imposed on the United States in the event of a court ruling affirming a “right” to “same-sex marriage.” And, I believe that all but the very first one (the actual fact of cohabitation) and the second one (the legal stuff which I hold to be separate from “marriage” and even from sexual matters generally) are harmful.

So my invitation is this: Which of them do you think are not harmful, and which of them do you think would not be imposed on the U.S. if “gay marriage” advocates got all they hope for from the courts? I grant you the initiative.

Finally, I think there are two missing issues here dealing with underlying assumptions:

1. What is marriage? What is its definition, its character, and its telos?

2. What is human sexuality? What is its definition, its character, and its telos?

For the topic to be thoroughly discussed, we’d have to exhaustively deal with those things.

Last note: Will you grant that I, in starting this argument on the merits, have NOT ONCE needed to reference an item of revelation?

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 1:45 PM (EST):

...continuing…

Aaron,

You say, “Maybe we need a philosophy to live in our secular life, but why should it be YOURS?” I’m not saying it should; I’m not identifying correct reasoning with any person. I hope that it is “mine,” of course, in one sense: I hope I reason rightly and that I can call natural reason “mine” in the sense that it is the form of reasoning I am employing. But I have nowhere asserted that you had to believe something merely because I said it.

You wrap up, “My point was that there have to be restrictions on guns because they are used to harm others. Same-sex marriage does not harm others.”

Ah! Yes. Now we’re dealing with the topic on the merits. You assert that “same-sex marriage does not harm others.”

I deny that premise…for certain values of the phrase “same-sex marriage.”

Let’s break it down. Which of the following definitions are we using?

“Same-sex marriage” = “Two men or two women cohabitating for the purpose of shared expenses, and strengthening the relationship not only with the usual characteristics of friendship, but also mutual masturbation, confined exclusively between the members of that pair, for life or until a civil divorce.” That’s one definition.

“Same-sex marriage” = According to the above-described domestic arrangement, provided it is registered with the state, the same “bundled” legal/contractual items as those accorded currently to heterosexual couples who obtain a marriage license and who do not opt to override the “bundled” legal/contractual items with a prenuptial agreement of their own.

“Same-sex marriage” = According to the above-described domestic arrangement, provided it is registered with the state, the same adoption preferences and child-custody status accorded to couples in a heterosexual marriage.

“Same-sex marriage” = Advocating, through the cultural influence of the legal system, a widespread view that homosexual couplings are not fundamentally different from heterosexual couplings.

“Same-sex marriage” = Federally enforcing upon the states, the people of the United States, businesses operating in the United States, employers operating in the United States, charities operating in the United States, churches operating in the United States, schools operating in the United States, healthcare providers operating in the United States, and individuals in the United States, a legal prohibition against treating a heterosexual married couple differently from a homosexual couple.

“Same-sex marriage” = Establishing in American law a precedent which, once established, cannot prevent but will instead encourage court cases intended to bring about the legalization and equal social approval of pedophilia/ephebophilia and bigamy (or other forms of group marriage).

As you can see, “same-sex marriage” has a lot of definitions. Which ones are you defending as not harming anyone?

If it’s the one involving hospital visitation, power-of-attorney, inheritance rights, and the latter, you might as well drop it in-so-far as I entirely agree with you.

Or…well, perhaps not entirely. I make three points on that one:

First, access to these legal items is possible with an attorney in all fifty states, so far as I know, and if it isn’t, it ought to be. But I grant it’s more expensive and more of a hassle to do it through attorneys than by getting a marriage license, which is typically a pretty painless process. For equal protection reasons, these legal items ought to be equally accessible to all, UNLESS the state has a “compelling state interest” in incentivizing one group. If the state has a compelling state interest in incentivizing one group, then of course it may do so…but in my opinion tax credits or some other more-transparent incentive are better than streamlined access to legal/contractual stuff!

Secondly, the imposition of “gay marriage” as a new social structure with all or most of the definitions I gave above is (a.) unnecessary as a way to streamline access to power-of-attorney, et cetera; and (b.) imposes (with the COMPULSORY power of the state!) a lot of other stuff on the country and on the society and on the culture which needlessly go beyond it to the detriment (I believe) of many.

Thirdly, all those legal/contractual “bundled” items, if they aren’t going to be confined to heterosexual couples for the purpose of family-building (which in turn is for the purpose of child-rearing, which is a compelling state interest because the children of today are the taxpayers and soldiers and businessmen of tomorrow), then there is no compelling state interest in confining them to sexual relationships at all.

For that reason, if you’re going to streamline them for non-heterosexual sex partners, you must also streamline them equally for law partners and tennis partners and people who like to play World of Warcraft together. It would be an equal protection violation if you didn’t.

...continuing…

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 1:19 PM (EST):

...continuing…

Aaron,

When you said, “,” I answered, “How so?” I would very much like to hear your reply to that.

But there is one point where I know certainly that I spoke as a Catholic. But it was not on the subject of whether there ought to be “gay marriage” in the laws of the United States, or whether a right to such a thing exists on equal protection grounds.

Rather, it was because, when you tried to argue for the Catholic Church changing its view in order to keep members, you revealed a lack of information regarding the Catholic faith.

So, naturally enough, I told you about the relevant details to show why your argument was utterly unsuited to convincing a Catholic. I had to speak as a Catholic to respond to that. But that was a separate topic from talking about “gay marriage” on “the merits.”

(BTW, I think a raw pursuit of membership numbers would have been better targeted at one of the flakier splinter-groups with a televangelist bent…Joel Osteen, perhaps?)

So, yes, I talked like a Catholic in that case. But on the matter of whether (once power-of-attorney and the like was easily available for any two, three, or ten persons, whether they were law partners, sex partners, or tennis partners) it made sense for either SCOTUS or Congress to impose on the states, the populace, the businesses, the churches & charities, and on individuals a requirement to treat same-gendered persons with a government cohabitation registration as if they were “married” in a fashion comparable to a heterosexual couple?

About that, I simply argue that it doesn’t make logical sense…and in doing so, I nowhere referenced the contents of the Bible, the Catechism, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or any of that.

...continued…

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 1:14 PM (EST):

...continuing…

Aaron,

You also say, “There is a growing population of ‘nones’ who don’t identify with any organized religion. No matter how many Catholics are in this country, there are still millions of people with other religions, agnostics, and atheists.”

This is true; but what’s it got to do with anything? A country could consist of 350 million Christopher Hitchenses (what a sight!) and it wouldn’t change whether an argument was correct or incorrect. Truth doesn’t become false because some people reasoned carelessly or from false premises and arrived at a different answer.

You also say that “They tend be more involved in secular matters” ...but I am not sure who you mean by “They”...atheists? More involved in “secular matters” than Christians? In that case I must not understand how you mean the term “secular matters”; in my understanding that refers to every aspect of life which is not explicitly religious; e.g. taking a bath or teaching one’s children to ride a bike. Christians certainly do not bathe more or less than atheists, and they’re rather more likely to be seen teaching their children to ride a bike inasmuch as they have about double the children per couple.

In the next note you say, “I’ve looked at the website for the book, and can only say that it looks like the philosophy is based on Judeo-Christian point of views.”

Well, because I identify with the Judeo-Christian tradition, I’d be vicariously ashamed if some other Jew or Christian departed radically from the philosophy used. But that’s not because the philosophy is required for worshipping YHWH, but rather because it’s correct and carefully reasoned…and I like my co-religionists to be good thinkers! It’s to the credit of Jews and Christians that they’ve associated their religious traditions with habits of reasoning which tend to be valid in all walks of life, religious or secular. But logic is just logic, whoever’s mouth it may emerge from.

You also say that you think there are “religious premises” involved. Which ones?

And you say that “religious premises” are “loosing popularity in this century.” Perhaps, but so what? Aristarchus had a pretty understanding (within the limits of his instrumentation) of the distance between the Earth and the stars; during the decline of the Roman empire this fell out of “popularity” but was preserved in the monasteries and became “popular” again in the High Middle Ages (among the literate). Think how many diets, or how many recommendations for child-rearing, have waxed and waned in popularity. Was the Atkins diet truer in its original popular phase in the late 60’s, and falser in the 80’s, and truer again in its brief resurgence around 2000?

At any rate the Christian faith has, to all appearances, died out a half-dozen times in the last 2,000 years in various places, only to spring to life again in a fashion that ironically or prophetically mirrors its content and creed. The (currently) waning popularity of premises I hold true (religious or otherwise) would be relevant only if we were we busy critiquing my skills at popularizing them. (But we aren’t! Good thing, too. Bumper-stickers are all the rage for popularizing slogans, and as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I congenitally can’t write anything that short!)

You say, “Everything else you write is still also the same Catholic point of view.”

How so?

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 1:12 PM (EST):

Aaron,

You still seem to hold a perspective that draws a strong categorical difference between philosophical and logical arguments employed by a Catholic (or, presumably, any practitioner of any form of Christianity or Judaism), and philosophical and logical arguments employed by an atheist or agnostic. And you seem to assert that their arguments should automatically be treated differently even if the argument happens to be the same argument, purely because of who is saying it. Is it your opinion that the least taint of theism makes the argument (or the arguer) an outcast, unfit for civil society?

I’m sure that isn’t your opinion. (You’d hardly be taking the time to respond to me if it was!) But in that case, what grounds have you for saying that a Catholic legislator or judge can’t take into account his understanding of the universe so far as it relies upon natural reasoning in legislating or adjudicating?

And in fact, because of my libertarian leanings, I would hold without fear that there are certain aspects of his understanding of the universe which are informed by revelation which he could fruitfully use, so long as he remained constrained by a particular, very tight, constraint; namely, that the same principles apply to individuals, to society’s law-enforcement, and to nations when determining the threshold for just use of force. (That’s a very high threshold indeed and pushes the argument for the role of government in a pro-gun-ownership direction at the individual level, but in a small-government direction at the domestic level and in an anti-war direction at the national level. The working-out of these principles, when applied to domestic affairs, would be something like, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Very convenient!)

But I’m trying to play on your turf, from within your assumptions, for the moment. For that reason I’ll not challenge whether revelation is permissible, and will instead argue purely from natural reason. And, conveniently, what the Catholic Church says with respect to homosexual tendencies and the prospect of “gay marriage” is premised entirely on natural reasoning and requires no recourse to revelation. So I need not argue for the permissibility of revelation in the epistemology which forms the applied worldview of the legislator or the judge.

There are some things which the Catholic Church teaches wherein she says, “This is what an atheist also believes, if he thinks clearly and doesn’t make errors of logic en route to his conclusions.” Naturally the arguments offered on such a topic are NOT going to say, “This is true because it’s in the Bible” because the Bible is revelation, not natural reasoning.

But of course good philosophy is used; that’s a part of natural reasoning because it is impossible to reason without making use of good philosophy. Merely asserting that A = A, or that a reductio ad absurdum demonstrates that the starting premise really is correct, or that a thing can’t be both true and false in the same way at the same time, are all examples of the kinds of good philosophy and natural reasoning used by Catholics (and other folk, including atheists) to come to their conclusions about “gay marriage.”

Now some secular folks will say, “Oh, as soon as you bring up philosophy you give the game away, because you can’t measure it on a scale or see it through a telescope.” But as I just observed, philosophy is required for thinking at all. It’s not that one can’t draw conclusions while being ignorant of philosophy. One can: But they’re vastly more likely to be wrong because of the various errors of logic that one won’t recognize, for lack of philosophical training. (Think how the philosophy website Less Wrong, run by an atheist, is so popular with Christians and especially Catholics despite the anti-Christian slant there: They know a good philosophical resource when they see it. Leah Libresco has created a minor sensation in the Catholic apologetics world by getting everyone interested in it!)

And as a consequence, that leaves the atheist and the Catholic on exactly the same playing-field, permitted to apply their worldview and their philosophy in adjudication or legislation.

I brought up philosophy because, to some atheists, philosophy is suspect. My intent was to debunk the notion that anyone could legislate or adjudicate without a philosophy, whether he knew he had one, or not. “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

Do you argue that point?

At any rate, I say all that in response to your sentence, “I’ve had many lectures on what Catholicism stands for. What you say doesn’t change anything—you are still writing from the Catholic point of view. I’m still writing from the secular point of view.”

...which sounds like, “Your argument, even if it never mentions God, is automatically discarded because you happen to believe in Him. My argument is not, because I don’t.” Why should a person’s belief in the validity of revelation cause an argument (which doesn’t reference revelation) to be discarded?

...continuing…

Posted by R.C. on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 12:52 PM (EST):

Sorry for my absence yesterday evening.

In the ongoing conversation, I think I’ll stick with Aaron, here. No offense to you, Savvy, at all! ...it’s just that he and I had a pretty detailed multi-point back-and-forth going there, and proceeding without rancor or excess of emotion. Inasmuch as that’s pretty rare in comboxes, I’d like to make the best of it.

Aaron, it looks to me like there are a lot of points I need to hit if I’m to “bat clean-up,” as it were. I’ll do my best to organize my thoughts fruitfully. Towards that end, I’m going to try to get a couple of the stray items of least importance out-of-the-way first. And, I’ll arrange my replies into several posts, and I’ll notify you when I’ve gotten to the end, so that you don’t jump in half-way through by accident. (We were kinda doing that to each other yesterday.)

Here’s the first unimportant item to get out-of-the-way:

You say, “I don’t know why you had to split hairs about the different types of guns and all that usual crap.”

Well, okay, I’m sorry about that. I gave into temptation. Mea culpa. Your particular choice of example happened to be a pet peeve—not that you could have known that, and not that it’s anything you particularly said.

You see—in my defense—it’s a topic I happen to know a thing or three about, and I have been more than aggrieved by the rank ignorance of the public conversation on the topic since Newtown.

Broadcast journalists and even state legislators—legislators famous for introducing gun control bills, no less!—have been boldly asserting stuff that’s ridiculously wrong and using nonsense phrases like “high-magazine clips” and “spraying the room with semi-automatic handgun fire.”

(For the record: A magazine is not a clip; a cartridge contains a bullet but is not a bullet, and a semi-automatic is the opposite of an automatic: You squeeze once and it goes bang once. And, the term “assault weapon” is a made-up term, which certain legislators employed in the hopes the public would assume it meant “machine gun,” whereas in the relevant legislation it meant “rifle with three or more of a particular list of cosmetic features.”)

To you, as a fellow who reads and perhaps even knows how to shoot, I’m sure that’s all old news: But a bunch of fainting Victorian matrons of both genders, who happen to have the microphone of popular media in their hands, seem blissfully unaware of it. Yet they think themselves sufficiently informed to write laws about it, or to pontificate from behind a newsdesk! And I didn’t even mention the legislator who didn’t know that you can re-load a magazine after it’s empty! ...oh. Sorry. There I go again.

But really: In the last few months I have come to appreciate the old saying, “The news is what you think is true about the world until you hear them trying to explain something you know anything about.” After that, you think, “Gee, if they’re getting this bit SO WRONG…what does that say about the reliability of everything else they say?

Okay, enough about that. Moving on…

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 8:58 AM (EST):

Posted by savvy on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 9:28 PM (EDT):
Whether atheists in the West like it or not. Christians are your spiritual ancestors, and the bulwark of Western civilization.
(((((((((((((
Not for long…..

Posted by Aaron Redford on Saturday, Apr 6, 2013 8:56 AM (EST):

Savvy—where did I bring up marriage laws in the Constitution?
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You wrote that I’ve made up my mind, so there is no point is discussing this with you. You’ll just whine that I keep disagreeing with you. Duh!

Posted by Karen on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 8:39 PM (EST):

Rex King- I’m not afraid of monotony…are you xenophobic?

Posted by savvy on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 8:28 PM (EST):

Whether atheists in the West like it or not. Christians are your spiritual ancestors, and the bulwark of Western civilization.

Posted by savvy on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 8:05 PM (EST):

Aaron,

You are also forgetting that secular means something different in different countries. There is nothing under International law that says Marriage MUST be re-defined into a genderless institution.

In France, civil marriage affirms the right of a child to a mother and a father. It’s not based on just, love between two people.

Posted by savvy on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 8:02 PM (EST):

Aaron,

You brought up marriage laws in the American constitution. I explained what they were referring too. Why are atheists so angry? Geez!

Posted by Aaron on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 7:57 PM (EST):

Savvy—you are full of **it.
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There were religions before Christianity and there will be religions after Christianity.
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The “Anglo-American legal tradition” is based on Judeo-Christian theology. Secular society is beginning to reject many of the doctrines of Judeo-Christian theology. As it’s been put many times before, religion doesn’t change. Religions deal with the fear of death because death is the ultimate change. The promise of an afterlife fuels the vain hope that death is not real.
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Secular society does change from era to era, and location to location.
That’s why secular laws deal with secular matters. Death is a reality in the secular worldview and civil societies try to prevent it for as long as possible.

Posted by savvy on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 7:30 PM (EST):

“(If the early framers of the Constitution wrote about god, it was a Protestant god.)”

You are clueless. The Protestant rule of faith is scripture alone. Liberals know argue this is no longer valid. This makes the Catholics more Protestant than the Protestants. Truth is strange than fiction.

Posted by savvy on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 7:28 PM (EST):

R.C.

Civil marriage in it’s current form is already a sham. It holds that minors are property, not persons. At least in American law. Further redefining it into a genderless institution will only mark the end of it.

Marriage is already declining, because people no longer see the point.

Posted by savvy on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 7:23 PM (EST):

Aaron,

The constitution writers were aware of marriage in the Anglo-American legal tradition. It’s the same that is listed in the book.

The issue is you are not interested in dialogue because you mind is already made up. This is a bit like fundamentalist Christians, who you can’t get anywhere with, because they will shut you up, “because the Bible says so”. You line is just, “because secularism says so.”

Posted by Aaron Redford on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 5:44 PM (EST):

R.C—I’ve looked at the website for the book, and can only say that it looks like the philosophy is based on Judeo-Christian point of views. Not that it’s not well-reasoned (I haven’t read it but I assume so), but it still is predicated on religious premises that are loosing popularity in this century.
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Everything else you write is still also the same Catholic point of view. (If the early framers of the Constitution wrote about god, it was a Protestant god.) Maybe we need a philosophy to live in our secular life, but why should it be YOURS?
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I don’t know why you had to split hairs about the different types of guns and all that usual crap. My point was that there have to be restrictions on guns because they are used to harm others. Same-sex marriage does not harm others.
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In the same sense, religion also needs to be regulated so that it doesn’t impose laws that harm people in secular life.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 5:27 PM (EST):

R.C—I was typing when you posted your last comment.
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I’ve had many lectures on what Catholicism stands for. What you say doesn’t change anything—you are still writing from the Catholic point of view. I’m still writing from the secular point of view.
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There is a growing population of “nones” who don’t identify with any organized religion. No matter how many Catholics are in this country, there are still millions of people with other religions, agnostics, and atheists. They tend be more involved in secular matters.
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Posted by R.C. on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 5:26 PM (EST):

Aaron:

Thanks for your reply.

You say that…“For Catholics, natural reasoning is predicated on their revelation.”

Not a bit of it. I disagree entirely. Examine the book What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense by Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George; their argument involves no use of revelation at all.

You say, “Secular matters are predicated on practical matters of living in this world,”

One cannot live practically without holding a philosophy.

“...and, in a democracy….”

I assume you mean constitutional democratic republic? Sorry to be a noodge, but there’s a reason the American founders condemned “democracy” as a form of government.

“...secular laws are made so that people can live in relative freedom so long as they don’t harm each other.”

Hmm. Let’s be accurate, here: In order to protect the inalienable rights of persons, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just authority from the consent of the governed (according to the Declaration)...and this consent confers authority by delegation (according to Amendment X) in accordance with the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God (according to nearly everything the Framers ever wrote).

You say, “For example, many people want gun control laws to restrict the sale of military assault weapons to civilians, because of the recent spike in mass murders in schools and other public places. This is reasonable because </i>not</i> owning an assault weapon is not really an imposition in secular life.”

Bad example; there are two definitions of the term “assault weapon”; one indicates a fully-automatic or similarly military-appropriate weapon, and those are already illegal for general ownership; the other was invented by legislators to mean “guns with cosmetic features we dislike” and a ban on those is both unconstitutional and would also in most cases be a severe imposition in secular life. Plus, see my earlier point that the government receives its just authority by delegation; if the people lack a natural authority in themselves to use proportionate tools for the defense of innocent persons, then the government must also lack that authority, because one can’t delegate an authority one doesn’t even have!

You say that marriage in the secular sense of “a civil union between two people—has rights and privileges in secular society.”

That is accurate.

You continue, “Forbidding marriage is a social imposition on people who want to commit to each other. (E.g. inheritance taxes that would not apply if the spouse is the opposite sex.)”

Ah, but if you read my earlier posts (and I admit they’re lengthy; sorry, it comes from trying to be precise) you’ll see that I strongly advocate that the state should make it easy for any two (or three, or five) people to establish powers-of-attorney, inheritance rights, designations of next-of-kin, et cetera, whether they are tennis partners, law partners, or sex partners. Most Catholics think likewise, and the Church does not disagree.

So, you’re arguing against a straw man, there. Of course such legal arrangements should be available. Why not?

But those are not relevant to social recognition of a thing as “marriage.” This is proven by the existence of “prenups”: Some of those same contractual/legal “default” arrangements can be overridden by a married couple making other non-default arrangements. Which goes to show you that they are add-on-riders and not necessary components of civil marriage at all. Nor is there any reason they should be tied especially to romantic or sexual feelings at all except where they would affect the ability of a family to raise children. But that brings us back to the Catholic view: That marriage is inherently gendered because, in order to make a baby, you need a mommy and a daddy.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 5:17 PM (EST):

R.C—to continue…
.And inasmuch as the philosophical/worldview underpinnings of Secularism serve the same role in the day-to-day life of the Secularist as the philosophical/worldview underpinnings of the Catholic serve in his living day-to-day, I see no reason to treat it as anything other than a functionally “religious” thing.
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Morality, under any religious/philosophical worldview, has to overlap, and conflict, with secular existence. Your religion may tell you “thou shalt not kill,” and that is also a practical secular rule in civilian life. It’s not practical for a soldier in a war—and religion in the military has to justify the killing of “the enemy.”
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Secularism is not a religion—but it has to deal with people of different religions (or lack of religion) living in the same society. Religion has an influence, but times are changing and same-sex marriage is acceptable to the majority of people and even celebrated. That is a fact of this life, not the next one.

Posted by R.C. on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 5:07 PM (EST):

Aaron Redford:

One quick additional response in reply to your other note, in which you:

(a.) Cite the fact that some other Christian sects teach that homosexual acts are morally licit, that committed long-term homosexual partnerships are morally equivalent to marriage, that a person embracing a homosexual lifestyle is no bar to authority roles in their organizations or to ordination, and the like; and,

(b.) Argue that, if the Catholic Church does not change its view, it will lose Catholics to these other sects.

I think there are a few things you do not currently understand about the Catholic faith. No shame in that, if you aren’t Catholic; very few people can take the time to be experts in faiths not their own!. But if you did understand it, you would not have bothered to argue in the way you did. Your argument makes no sense at all when read through Catholic eyes.

First, the Church exists in the world not to keep membership numbers high, but to “bear witness to the truth” in order that souls might be saved and saints might be made. One can dangle the bait of “keeping members” in front of the Church, of course, as a way of recommending some stratagem. But such a stratagem only makes sense if, by doing using it, the Church can more effectively communicate the gospel truth, save souls, and make saints. And, incidentally, the stratagem itself has to not involve mortal sin, so that those employing it would not thereby risk going to hell.

But your stratagem is not something like, “hold the St. Jude novena on Tuesdays instead of Thursdays.” Your stratagem amounts to, “Tell a lie to people that confuses them about right and wrong and occludes the truth about one of the seven sacraments.” Now, not only would this put the souls of the hearers at risk, making it harder them to be saved and to become saints, but it would also be mortal sin by those employing it! No, no; that will never do.

Show us how to keep members who’ll still be happily in love with Jesus fifteen million years after their deaths! That’s the kind of stratagem the Church cares about.

Secondly, the Catholic Church has already taught infallibly on these matters.

That means, that as a matter of doctrine, were the Magisterium to reverse itself, it would demonstrate that the earlier view was an error; this in turn would demonstrate that the Magisterium could err in matters of faith and morals taught to the universal Church; this in turn would—according to Catholic ecclesiology—indicate that Jesus had failed in His promise of indefectability in making the Church the “pillar and bulwark of truth” by having that which the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter bound on Earth be also bound in Heaven. And, that, of course, would mean that Jesus could not be God.

As a matter of keeping parishoners, I cannot think of anything that would cause the Church to lose members more quickly than an action which permanently invalidated its entire teaching!

Thirdly, are you aware that the very Christian sects and sub-sects which adopt teachings contrary to historical Christianity are the ones whose membership is shrinking fastest?

It’s true. The Episcopalians were once by far the most numerous denomination in the U.S.; now they’re such a tiny percentage of American Christians that it is only through cultural inertia that they get mentioned as a prominent sect. The way things are going, in a few years they’ll stand beside the Christadelphians in numbers. (In overall orthodoxy, too.) Meanwhile, after the Catholics, it’s groups like Southern Baptists that are the next-most numerous.

This is not to say that folks don’t leave orthodoxy for heterodoxy; they do. But their kids, seeing what a weak-tea thing heterodoxy is, typically either return to the orthodoxy their parents abandoned, or just chuck the whole thing and become resentful atheists.

So, all-in-all, your advice for keeping members wouldn’t work terribly well even were the Catholic Church able to change its mind on such teachings like other sects can.

And, in point-of-fact, they can’t. In another seventy-five million years, the chair of Peter may very well have been moved to Alpha Centauri for all I know. But the Church still won’t be ordaining women or performing gay “marriages,” and if anyone wants to argue either point, faithful Catholics will respond, “Alpha Centauri locuta, causa finita est!”

Posted by Aaron Redford on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 5:06 PM (EST):

R.C.—You had it, and then you lost it.
.The things which cause Catholics to object to the Secularist view in this debate are not matters of revelation, but of natural reasoning.
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For Catholics, “natural reasoning” is predicated on their “revelation.” Secular matters are predicated on practical matters of living in this world, and, in a democracy, secular laws are made so that people can live in relative freedom so long as they don’t harm each other.
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For example, many people want gun control laws to restrict the sale of military assault weapons to civilians, because of the recent spike in mass murders in schools and other public places. This is reasonable because </i>not</i> owning an assault weapon is not really an imposition in secular life.
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“Marriage”—in the secular sense of a civil union between two people—has rights and privileges in secular society. Forbidding marriage is a social imposition on people who want to commit to each other. (E.g. inheritance taxes that would not apply if the spouse is the opposite sex.)
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Same-sex marriage has NO imposition on Catholics or the Catholic faith.

Posted by R.C. on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 3:50 PM (EST):

Aaron Redford:

Thanks for your response.

Catholics have dealt with this particular fashion (homosexual acts and how they are understood in both natural moral reasoning and revealed moral reasoning) since the beginning, as you’ll find in the epistles of St. Paul. And of course, although modern Western confusion and ignorance about sex is somewhat rare human history, both the Greeks and the Romans shared it on occasion, and the Church interacted with those societies as well. So what gives you the impression that this is the first time the topic has crossed the Church’s radar?

Re: Your use of the word “fictional”: I don’t think you’re actually using this as a premise in an argument, so I’ll pass over it: You’re entitled to your opinion. But please note that if you were to use the afterlife being “fictional” as a premise for an argument, you’d be obligated to first demonstrate that; it’s not a premise I’d stipulate!

Skipping over that, you say, “RC—secularism is concerned with this life—womb to tomb, birth to earth—and is not concerned about souls or [the] afterlife.” Then you go on to say, “That’s why there is separation between church and state in this country.”

Your argument isn’t fully-and-precisely-stated, but I gather it takes this form:

P1: If a topic concerns things which can only be known by revelation and which cannot be known by natural reasoning, then “Congress shall make no law” respecting that topic;

P2: The topic of same-sex marriage, as viewed by Catholicism, involves certain things which cannot be known by natural reason; but,

P3: The topic of same-sex marriage, as viewed by Secularism, involves only things which can be known by natural reason;

C1: Therefore, Congress shall make no law respecting same-sex marriage in a fashion informed by Catholicism [P1 + P2]; but,

C3: Congress must legislate regarding same-sex marriage, if it does so, in a fashion informed purely by Secularism, preferring Secularist understandings over Catholic understandings whenever they are in conflict.

I think that’s a pretty good rendering?

If so, here are some places where your argument is incorrect:

1. The Catholic view of marriage does involve things which can only be known by revelation, but they are mostly not relevant to this debate. The things which cause Catholics to object to the Secularist view in this debate are not matters of revelation, but of natural reasoning. Consequently Catholic premises and Secularist premises are on equal footing, even granting the rest of your argument, and may be used equally to inform legislators and judges.

2. The Secularist view of marriage regularly makes assertions about morality, human sexuality, marriage, the proper role of the state, and so forth which are philosophical in nature rather than having a character which can be informed by the physical sciences. (So does the Catholic view; but they are aware of it and acknowledge it, and Secularists often aren’t and don’t.)

This leaves the Secularist with a dilemma: Either these aspects of his argument are not subject to natural reasoning—in which case his view, premised on them, is no more permissible for informing legislation or adjudication than the Catholic—or, they are—in which case the corresponding aspects of the Catholic view are equally permissible. In either case the Secularist has no valid argument for preferring the Secularist assumptions over the Catholic assumptions when legislating or adjudicating.

So, I stand by my observation that, especially in this debate, Catholicism and Secularism are equally “religious” (where “religious” is shorthand for “of a character invalidating their use in informing American law when written, interpreted, and applied). And inasmuch as the philosophical/worldview underpinnings of Secularism serve the same role in the day-to-day life of the Secularist as the philosophical/worldview underpinnings of the Catholic serve in his living day-to-day, I see no reason to treat it as anything other than a functionally “religious” thing.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 12:11 PM (EST):

RC—secularism is concerned with this life—womb to tomb, birth to earth—and is not concerned about souls or a fictional afterlife. That’s why there is separation between church and state in this country.
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Yes, same-sex marriage is the “fashion” of the secular world, just as mixed-sex marriage is the “fashion” of Catholics. We don’t expect Catholics to change their fashion, but if Catholics want to participate in a secular world before they die, they will have to deal with secular fashions.

Posted by Aaron Redford on Friday, Apr 5, 2013 12:05 PM (EST):

There are lots of religions that support same-sex unions:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blessing_of_same-sex_unions_in_Christian_churches
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You’ll just be loosing more Catholics to other Christian sects. That’s your problem.

Posted by John Craft on Thursday, Apr 4, 2013 11:34 PM (EST):

I have just recently joined the Church, (Conformation last Easter Vigil Mass. Emma (Emma on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 1:22 PM (EDT)) I just read your post with Intrest. I and my late wife had a similar experience, though we did not have the counsel and guidance you had from the church. It resulted in twenty seven wonderful years till our God saw a need to bring her to him. Lately I have been wondering if traditional societies, be they Christian, Muslim, etc, know something we in the west forgot, feelings (that is romantic love) is Not the most solid foundation on which to build a marriage.

Posted by Moneyistheroot on Thursday, Apr 4, 2013 5:21 PM (EST):

The infertility argument is irrelevant and proves why marriage is actually parenthood. To marry is to consummate, from this, the potential is always there to procreate if the principle is male and female. That is why marriage has two parts to the definition in European Law; To marry AND found a family. By definition, this means that you can marry (have sex) and the state will recognise and protect the fact that children may arise from this. This is why infertile people/ older people can marry. They fit the essential principle of marriage which is parenthood possible.

This is the child centred institution we currently have. Why else would the state have endorsed and protected marriage in the first place other than for this? This is the correct definition of marriage. When we change the definition of marriage, what happens to the right to found a family aspect? Who will provide the children to SS couples?

Posted by savvy on Thursday, Apr 4, 2013 11:31 AM (EST):

Rex King,

Marriage is not just about love. You do not need a piece of paper to love someone. There are many forms of marriage that are currently illegal. Civil marriage itself is a sham. Further redefining marriage into a genderless institution would mark the death of it.

“If marriage is about reproduction, then infertile couples would not be allowed to marry. Ability or desire to create offspring has never been a qualification for marriage. George Washington, often referred to as “the Father of Our Country,” did not have children with his wife Martha Custis, and neither did four other married US presidents.”

These men and women are still sexually complimentary. Genderless marriage is not. And children need a mother and a father, biological or otherwise, since children everywhere are born from a mother and a father.

Posted by Kathleen on Thursday, Apr 4, 2013 10:28 AM (EST):

R.C.,
Thank you for your comments.It’s struck me, too, how evangelistic & narrowly fundamentalist the strict secularists’ behavior tends to be.Every era seems to have it’s zealots that takes a philosophy over the edge.

Posted by R.C. on Thursday, Apr 4, 2013 1:03 AM (EST):

Rex King:

I’d be wary, if I were you, about saying stuff like, ‘Whether you call it “marriage” or “civil union” it’s a secular issue. Religion has no right to dictate government law.’

Secularism is also a religion, if we’re using “religion” in the fashion that’s relevant for legislative purposes.

What I mean is this: There are lots of things that are popularly called “religions,” but have you tried to define the term in such a way that it excludes everything that ought to be excluded and still includes everything that ought to be included, AND makes sense of why human beings have “the right to free exercise of religion” at all?

I’m afraid that the only definition which works in that context is something like this: “A religion is a worldview and set of practices consisting of all or most of the following: A cosmology, an anthropology, an understanding of the problems of human evil and suffering and death, a set of opinions about how to solve these problems, a set of opinions about what constitutes right behavior and why, a set of opinions about nature and the supernatural and the character of both, and a set of practices to reinforce the above opinions in practitioners of the religion and to inculcate them in others.”

This isn’t terribly brief, of course. But it accurately describes religions, accurately excludes things that shouldn’t properly be regarded religions, and most importantly makes excellent sense of why religious views should be called “matters of conscience” and kept free from government compulsion.

But here’s the problem: It means that almost everyone has a religion and almost everyone is practicing his religion all the time, every day. This isn’t a problem with the definition; rather, the definition is helping us clarify reality.

For of course atheists these days are notably evangelistic, even fundamentalist, aren’t they? And anyone watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series—which I quite loved otherwise, I should say—was struck by how deeply religious it was: He was enraptured with his vision of all that was, of man’s place in the Cosmos, of how we ought to behave—with frowns at certain human foibles—and of course the whole thing was an exercise in evangelism or catechesis in this worldview!

I bring this up because everyone’s acting religiously, when they aren’t acting erratically. Show me a man who knows what he’s doing and why he’s doing it and thinks he’s doing the right thing, and I’ll show you a man who’s acting religiously: He has an integrated worldview which encourages or obligates him to do it. To “have a religion,” so defined, means almost exactly the same thing as “leading a well-examined life.”

I draw an analogy to the old saying that “You can’t legislate morality.” That saying is, to be blunt, stupid and ignorant. Of course you can; in fact when legislators legislate, they almost never do anything but legislate morality. Just passing a law to add a stop sign at a four-way-stop is legislating morality: You’re saying that it’s a just (morally licit) use of force to collect tax funds from the populace for such a purpose; you’re saying it’s a morally permissible or obligatory stewardship of those funds to use them for purchasing a stop-sign, and you’re using a morals-informed value system to judge that THIS use of those funds is more important than OTHER uses.

It is less obviously incorrect to say that religion can’t or shouldn’t dictate human law, but it is still incorrect…and deeply anti-American, by the way, if you read the Founding Fathers. They held that the Natural Law was the obvious starting point for all human legislation: And while they thought of that as somewhat of a secular view (because it took no recourse to revelation), from our perspective it looks deeply religious (because so many secularists these days doubt the existence of “The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in the sense the Founders used the phrase).

At any rate a legislator’s worldview—what he/she believes to be true, and ESPECIALLY what he/she regards to be a licit and proportional (or an illicit and disproportionate) use of force—not only MUST be involved in his legislative decisions, but it CAN’T NOT BE. One can’t even engage in reasoning without making use of one’s worldview!

So the argument by leftist secularists that one ought not “allow one’s religion to influence one’s legislation” is bunk. They probably don’t know that they’re doing it—though some of them do—but it is a deception. What they are saying—but are trying not to let us know that they are saying it—is this: “Our worldview includes no God and no objective morality, and it is okay for us to write legislation in a fashion informed by this worldview. YOUR worldview includes both God and objective morality, and we’ll call that worldview ‘religion’ and deny that the same term applies to our own worldview. And that means YOU may NOT use your worldview when writing legislation; you must instead PRETEND to hold OUR worldview when legislating.”

St. Thomas More, pray for us, that God may grant much-need wisdom to people who think of conscience as a moral relativistic word! St. Thomas More was martyred by the state for upholding the true definition of conscience (as objectively revealed by Christ through his ONE holy Church).

Posted by Henry on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 4:39 PM (EST):

This issue of gays and marriage is not about legislation or law, it goes beyond this issue and back to the deeper roots of sin. Marriage is a sacrament and sin cannot be a sacrament. It doesn’t fit or belong. But in the end will win the argument because Pilate asked Christ what is truth? Even though it troubled Pilate to give in, he ultimately
gave into the Pharisees to save his worldly job and pride. So sin might win temporally but in the end will prove to be the wrong way to go. But faith asks us to keep praying even in the face of death.

Rex King, by your wrong definition of conscience is morally relativistic & is aligned with false Protestant Reformation beliefs (“you have your idea of right & wrong, & everybody else has theirs”) not the true morally objective reality definition of conscience (which the Catholic Church teaches). There is Only ONE Truth (which delegates right & wrong); to have different versions of “truth” logically goes against the Nature of Truth (Christ) Himself, which draws all Things to Himself to make ONE. JESUS (Matt. 16:18): “THOU art PETER….. And I will give to you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven: and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven: and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” JESUS never said: “Thou art Rex King….” Just accept truth.

Rex King, your ignorance is showing. Listen, I once used to be like you & have the attitude: “oh, I’m so ‘enlightened’ which is why my little personal opinions are more ‘enlightened’ than faithfully following the Church.” Until after many hard trials in life, I got the newsflash (which you need to receive & accept): The Church’s authority (Apostolic succession thru St. Peter) & teachings (Sacred Tradition, Bible, doctrines, Magisterium) were a gift of Jesus Christ (through the Holy Spirit) to all willing to open their minds & hearts to the Truth (which is Christ Himself). Listen, the Church is wiser & knows better than you or I will ever know, so quit being disobedient to God’s perfect will (like Lucifer is) & accept the Truth, which will set you free. Be a FAITHFUL Catholic for a change. Don’t try changing the Catholic faith to accomodate your ignorant worldview, instead change yourself to be more faithfully aligned & obedient to the One True Church founded by Christ Himself.

Posted by Betty on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 4:02 PM (EST):

Karen: No, I’m not. The truth is eternal. It doesn’t change, ever. What is true yesterday, is true today, and will be true tomorrow and a thousand years from now. As Pope Emeritus Benedict once said, “The truth is not determined by a majority vote.” Your views may have “evolved” but the truth doesn’t.

Posted by Rex King on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 3:57 PM (EST):

Karen—can’t you figure out what’s right and what’s wrong without the Catholic Church authority? Do you live in a state that allows civil unions for same-sex couples?
.
They probably don’t want to be “married” in the Catholic sense—they want their union to be recognized in secular society the same way couples married in religious ceremonies are recognized in secular society.
.
You need a license to get married—even in a Catholic ceremony—for it to be recognized in secular society—otherwise the law considers a couple is just living together. It doesn’t matter if they have children together, it is not a legal marriage.
.
Your homophobia is showing.

Posted by Rex King on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 3:50 PM (EST):

I think Georgia RNC Chairperson Sue Everhart is right—same sex marriage is just a scam for two straight men to live together and get cheaper health insurance.

Posted by Karen on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 2:25 PM (EST):

Cowalker, your points are well made, especially the point that redefining marriage could (and should) have been avoided by strictly dealing with same-sex marriages as civil unions. Surprisingly for such an overwhelmingly liberal state as Washington, voters did not come out with a huge majority vote in support (6% votes in favor was the difference).

Knowing a couple of same-sex couples who committed to each other via civil union, I still have yet to see anyone of them discriminated against- they are all in good jobs, have insurance, own homes, etc. I don’t see how same sex couples are being discriminated against in our time. Could you provide an example for me?

Or is it more that liberal forces are attacking the stance of those opposed to marriage definitions that include same-sex unions?

Discrimination can run both ways; and, I believe, many people feel forced to accept an agenda that is intrinsically wrong in so many ways. I believe, faith aside that children are healthiest when they’re produced and raised by the original parents (yes, the ideal, not everyone’s situation).

The fact that we believe in a right way and a wrong way and that’s presented in our culture (entertainment, news media, etc)as being trite and old fashioned is the strangest and most disturbing result of all.

Doesn’t right and wrong exist anymore? How will our children and future society define what’s right and wrong? If everyone is right, who is wrong?

Will this legislation and the states to follow (and it will follow as no politician can ostracize a political group as powerful as the liberal one) be for the betterment of society?

Posted by Rex King on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 1:31 PM (EST):

Whether you call it “marriage” or “civil union” it’s a secular issue. Religion has no right to dictate government law.

Posted by William F. Folger on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 1:15 PM (EST):

Well said, R.C. (Apr 2, 2013 6:24 PM. & 11:35 PM), Karen (Apr 2, 7:45, 7:51 & 7:57 PM) and Betty (Apr 3, 4:51 AM, including her ‘hom-tatics’ link).
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There is a wrong idea circulating which asserts we should use ONLY secular arguments to convince the rapidly growing numbers of God abandoning Americans because the Constitution is *totally secular*. Such a constitutional assertion is an exaggeration because Article VII’s little-noticed “unnecessary DOUBLE-dating” of its ratification explicitly highlights the year of our Independence about which Supreme Court Justices a lot closer to the Founding times wrote in their case-dicta comments: “…it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.”
.
To be clear about the Constitution’s dating, no claims are made about the occurrence of “our Lord” in the first part of the then standard way of dating. And if dating were the sole intent in Article VII then bringing in the Declaration of Independence was unnecessary for dating-only purposes. To argue it was mere sentimentality 1) demeans that crucial line “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” —ironically used against themselves by some in the LGBT movement —and 2) demeans the Revolution’s heroes who made the supreme sacrifice so that we could advance to a Constitution stage where, tellingly against Leftists “arguments”, a “more perfect union” is called for by the Founders.
.
Something which strives to become closer to perfection abandons neither Creator God highly honored in the Declaration nor the approximations to what are right concepts that are made along the way. Remember that “God does write straight with crooked lines” – us faulty humans – even in the case of the lineage of Jesus Christ our Savior:
.
http://www.jesusourshepherd.org/m090111.php

Posted by Robert A.Rowland on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 1:10 PM (EST):

The bottom line is if our nation does indeed trust God, it is bound by His commands and decrees. Anyone who desires salvation, God’s intended goal for humanity, must also conform to His will and obey his doctrines. If the Supreme Court approves gay marriage, it will only invalidate our nation’s trust in God, and those who individually condone or engage in it incur their own condemnation. Back to square one with the same eternal choice of heaven or hell. If you trust the human majority opinion with your soul, you are a consummate fool.

Posted by Karen on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 12:52 PM (EST):

Cowalker, your points are well made, especially the point that redefining “marriage” could (and should) have been avoided by strictly dealing with same-sex marriages as “civil unions”. Surprisingly for such a liberal state, voters did not come out overwhelming in support (6% votes in favor was the difference).

Knowing a couple of same-sex couples who committed to each other via civil union, I still have yet to see anyone of them discriminated against- they are all in good jobs, have insurance, own homes, etc. I don’t see how same sex couples are being discriminated against in our time. Could you provide an example for me?

Or is it more that liberal forces are attacking the stance of those opposed to marriage definitions that include same sex unions?

Discrimination can run both ways; and, I believe, many people feel forced to accept an agenda that is intrinsically wrong in so many ways. I believe, faith aside that children are healthiest when they’re produced and raised by the original parents.

The fact that we believe in a right way and a wrong way and that’s presented in our culture (entertainment, news media, etc)as being trite and “old fashioned” is the strangest and most disturbing result of all, for don’t right and wrong exist anymore? How will our children and future society define what’s right and wrong? If everyone is right, who is wrong?

Will this legislation and the states to follow (and it will follow as no politician can ostracize a political group as powerful as the liberal one) be for the betterment of society?

Posted by Karen on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 11:59 AM (EST):

I think that goes both ways, Betty. Maybe it’s you who’s in the trap…?

Posted by William F. Folger on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 9:18 AM (EST):

Well said, R.C. (Apr 2, 2013 6:24 PM. & 11:35 PM), Karen (Apr 2, 7:45, 7:51 & 7:57 PM) and Betty (Apr 3, 4:51 AM, including her ‘hom-tatics’ link).
.
There is a wrong idea circulating which asserts we should use ONLY secular arguments to convince the rapidly growing numbers of God abandoning Americans because the Constitution is *totally secular*. Such a constitutional assertion is an exaggeration because Article VII’s little-noticed “unnecessary DOUBLE-dating” of its ratification explicitly highlights the year of our Independence about which Supreme Court Justices a lot closer to the Founding times wrote in their case-dicta comments: “…it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.”
.
To be clear about the Constitution’s dating, no claims are made about the occurrence of “our Lord” in the first part of the then standard way of dating. And if dating were the sole intent in Article VII then bringing in the Declaration of Independence was unnecessary for dating-only purposes. To argue it was mere sentimentality 1) demeans that crucial line “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” —ironically used against themselves by some in the LGBT movement —and 2) demeans the Revolution’s heroes who made the supreme sacrifice so that we could advance to a Constitution stage where, tellingly against Leftists “arguments”, a “more perfect union” is called for by the Founders.
.
Something which strives to become closer to perfection abandons neither Creator God highly honored in the Declaration nor the approximations to what are right concepts that are made along the way. Remember that “God does write straight with crooked lines” – us faulty humans – even in the case of the lineage of Jesus Christ our Savior:
.
http://www.jesusourshepherd.org/m090111.php

Posted by Ann on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 8:01 AM (EST):

My Grandparents were married on New Years Eve 1907 because on Jan.1,1908,the state of NY began requiring a license to get married and they thought that was criminal that the state would be involved in a sacrament. They found a priest to marry them and they eloped.The license was viewed as a tax to raise money for the govt.Marriage was viewed as the business of God,not the state.So it began and here we are with the govt defining marriage and not the church. In Italy today you can get a civil or church marriage. The civil union marriage is not recognized by the church no matter what sex you are but the church marriage is recognized by the state. I have come to believe that nothing good comes from govt intervention!

Posted by James on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 7:21 AM (EST):

It sound like the author of this article is the one who wants to redefine marriage so that civil marriage is closer to the Catholic understanding of marriage than the current law. Here’s the truth about civil marriage:

1. Civil marriage is a product of the state. It is a legal institution. The state can call it “marriage”, but it really is a civil union. Holy matrimony was created by God. They are not the same, unless you want to equate the “one man, one woman, children optional, for however long we feel like it” definition of civil marriage with Holy matrimony. The Catholic Church does not recognize civil marriages, so why do they care?

2. What couples do in the privacy of their own bedroom is not the concern of the state. Contrary to popular belief, consummation is not required to have a valid civil marriage. Nor is “consummation” limited to vaginal intercourse.

3. There is no requirement to procreate in a civil marriage. Nor are infertile or elderly couples barred from procreation.

4. The state does have an interest in promoting stable family units. And yes, the law does look at romantic love as a part of marriage. In North Carolina, a “homewrecker” can be sued for Alienation of Affection, which means that they cause the unfaithful spouse to lose affection for their spouse. While North Carolina is in the minority of states on this, issues of love and affection do come up in issues related to marriage and divorce.

5. Same-sex couples do not fulfill the requirements for marriage in the Catholic Church, but given the current definition and meaning of civil marriage, there is no reason to prevent them from getting marriage licenses.

6. Same-sex couples have good reasons for wanting civil marriage. The current DOMA case, United States v. Windsor, is a tax case. Two women were legally married in Canada, but because the United States does not recognize the marriage, the widow owes thousands of dollars in inheritance taxes.

Posted by Betty on Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 3:51 AM (EST):

I have a question for those of you who claim to be Catholic and also support SSM. Have your views “evolved” over time? How did that happen? Do you think it’s possible that you have been indoctrinated over time to come to accept SSM? Please thoughtfully consider this article:

http://www.cfnews.org/page10/page92/hom-tactics.html

I think if you are honest with yourself, you will see how you have fallen into a trap.

Why do you liberal Catholics think you know more & better than the Church found by Jesus Christ with apostolic authority? How arrogant. MOTHER ANGELICA & Archbp. FULTON SHEEN we need you to continue catechize the silly liberal “Catholics” who obviously don’t realise the Final Judgement that ALL will face in the Second coming of Christ. Do NOT be rebellious to the teachings of the faith (like Lucifer) but be submissive to the Father (just as Our Most Holy Jesus, Son of God, was to the point of crucifixion). And accepting Homosexuality & “SSM” (grave sins, “Abominations” according to Old/New Testaments) for “economic purposes” (money) is to follow Judas (selling the Truth- Jesus- for thirty worthless silver coins). Pathetic

Posted by ChestertoniansUnite on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 11:50 PM (EST):

Progressive “Catholics”, I just can’t understand. Please, help me understand… if you are not willing to fully support & live out Catholic Church teachings, doctrines, & faith, why do you insist on remaining Catholic? Jesus says woe to those that cause scandal in the faith & hypocrites (those like liberals, who claim to be Catholic yet oppose the Church’s very tenants, teachings & authority). Are you not scared of the coming Judgement? Where are the MOTHER ANGELICALS & Archbp. FULTON SHEENS in our Church’s clergy/religious today? We need more of them to catechize the non-sensical, liberal “Catholics” who think they know more & better than the Church. Mama mia!

Posted by Henry on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 11:45 PM (EST):

It is still immoral and not an act of God. No matter what laws the supreme court judges think they can change, the voice of the people is being thrown out because of activists of the far -left are radically ruining this country.
Homosexual acts are not natural or Gods love. Amen.

Posted by R.C. on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 10:35 PM (EST):

Andi:

2-5% is overstating it; best estimates are a little under 3%...and that’s including bisexuals and people whose preferences are best explained as stemming from childhood abuse.

Also, it’s important to notice, those numbers tend to be derived from studies performed on WEIRD demographics; that is to say, West­ern, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies. Such sample sets are often used by university sexuality studies (since students are available in quantity and willing to have their sexual habits studied for little or no pay). Folk from such groups tend indeed to be weirdly non-representative of the human population as a whole, though.

Posted by R.C. on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 10:29 PM (EST):

...continued from previous post…

In the case of incentivizing heterosexual marriage, the compelling state interest for incentives is simply this: Those heterosexual couples will produce the next generation’s citizens…even, in many cases, if they are adulterous or change spouses five times. A pair of guys who cohabitate won’t produce more citizens, no matter how faithfully exclusive they are in their homosexual activities.

In American law, therefore, there exists a compelling state interest to maintain incentives for heterosexual couples which are denied to other kinds of couples. It is, however, noteworthy that contraception reduces the justification for these incentives, and sterilization (especially voluntary sterilization while young) makes these incentives pointless. In fact, the U.S. government could reasonably deny those incentives to infertile couples or elderly couples, and probably would, if it weren’t a pretty big privacy concern to have the IRS coming ‘round demanding everybody’s medical records to see if they’re fertile.

If it weren’t for that privacy concern, I personally would RECOMMEND cutting those incentives so that they aren’t used on DINK free-riders. More reasonably, though, the incentives should probably be targeted per-cohabiting-biological-parent, per-child. That way, childless couples got nothing, and single parents got half what married parents got. This would target the “compelling state interest” as accurately as possible without raising privacy concerns.

By the way, I should probably mention that the “incentives” were once pretty strong but now, with the complexities of U.S. tax law, probably constitute a disincentive for many couples; they call it the “marriage penalty.” But more sensible laws may one day replace the current ones and strongly incentivize marriage; and in that case the criterion for a gay man receiving them would be his willingness to cohabitate and bear children with a woman, just as it is for a straight man. There is thus no equal protection issue, at all. The incentives—such as they are—exist because of the state’s interest in the next generation; without that, they’re pointless.

2. What about power-of-attorney? Inheritance? Property rights in the case of a split-up?

Ah, well, you see, these things existed covenantally as a part of marriage prior to state involvement and would continue to exist culturally even if the state became once again too weak to enforce them. The state’s enforcement, in fact, is not really of the marriage; per se; but rather, of a set of civil contracts which the state has automatically signed up both parties of the marriage to enter. A couple which prefers not to enter those contracts need only not notify the state that they are married. (Of course, then they won’t get the aforementioned incentives, either.)

And of course many married couples intentionally forgo some of the property-related “bundled contracts” provided by the states: That is, they get a “prenup.” This demonstrates the civil-law severability of marriage from the “bundled contracts” which the state enforces.

So it stands to reason that a gay couple ought to be able, cheaply and easily, to obtain contracts by which they identify one another as next-of-kin, grant power-of-attorney and default heir status, and so on. Any two sex partners could do this. Any two law partners could do this. Any two tennis partners could do this. The sexual or romantic aspect is of no interest to the state; the state’s interest is in enforcing contracts; that is, in prosecuting a form of fraud.

If a state denies two men the incentives it uses to incentivize childrearing; well, that just shows the state knows the basic facts of human biology well enough not to be bilked out of taxpayer money. But if it denies two men their right to enter contracts with one another and have them enforced purely because they play tennis together, or practice law together, or like to engage in mutual masturbation, then THAT IS an equal-protection problem. That IS discriminatory. It could only exist because the state is trying to disincentivize—rather crudely—a sexual disorder…and one which everyone agrees is nearly impossible to treat, and certainly can’t be “cured” by making those who have it ineligible for certain forms of contract enforcement! There’s obviously no compelling state interest here.

Am I arguing for “civil unions?” Not under that name, but effectively, yes: The same contractual obligations available to married couples, with the same promise of state enforcement, ought to be made available equally to any two persons, whatever their relationship. Why can’t two brothers select one another as next-of-kin? Why can’t two friends grant one another power-of-attorney?

(Of course in many states this is already the case: All the contractual benefits of marriage may be had by two persons not married if they do the appropriate paperwork. Where this is not the case, however, the law ought to be changed.)

3. What about state recognition?

What about it? Why should gay couples care if the state said their romantic lives was certified and approved by Uncle Sam (apart from the incentives and the contract enforcement, which we’ve already dealt with)? Is this just an attempt to achieve some cheap substitute for parental or divine approval?

4. What about state enforcement of approval by private organizations (e.g. employers, businesses, churches, individuals)?

The state has no just authority to force anyone to mouth approval for anyone else’s sexual proclivities, period. If an employer chooses to give medical benefits to a straight cohabiting couple but not a gay couple, that may be an act of religious conviction, or it may be an act of bigotry, or it may be an act of cost-cutting; but whichever it is, it is none of the state’s business. If a baker opts not to make wedding cakes for homosexual commitment ceremonies, the state has no just authority to force him to do so. If a church preaches that homosexuals ought to live chastely (which is correct) or even that homosexuals are hated by God (which is blasphemous), that is not the business of the state.

For we must always remember: The state is the organization in society with a monopoly on the use of force, and USING FORCE AGAINST OUR FELLOW MAN IS NOT JUST in most circumstances. None of the above examples involved an employer, a business, a church, or an individual using force (even intellectual force; a.k.a. “fraud”) against a homosexual couple. If it did, state intervention would be warranted; since it does not, no such warrant exists.

ONE FINAL NOTE:

Marriage is also sometimes taken to be an indicator of a couple being fit to adopt children. “Gay marriage,” however, ought not have similar standing in civil law inasmuch as children have rights to fathering, mothering, and family-ing (see my earlier post).

Indeed, there is some tiny chance that a single gay man or woman might someday reverse course (it happens) or even, in that hilarious phrase, “pray away the gay” (more accurately, accept their temptations as real but annoy the devil by living chastely in spite of them) and take up with an opposite-sex spouse. But a “married” (civil-contract obligated) gay man or woman, by virtue of their declared commitment, would seem to be less likely to ever marry an opposite-sex person. They are therefore THAT MUCH LESS eligible as a candidate for adopting a child: They’re less likely to provide a household which features fathering, mothering, and siblings.

None of this is to deny the utter tragedy and farce of many orphanages and of the adoption system in the United States. But that is a problem the churches and charities ought to be solving; it is a love-matter, not a force-matter, and state mismanagement is much of what has caused the problem. (For when an organization which can wield force gets involved in any facet of life, it naturally shoulders aside every other organization, forcibly homogenizing that facet of life, for good or for ill.)

At any rate, there is a scarcity of healthy under-7 children for adoption in the U.S.—one reason couples wishing to adopt usually do so from overseas. The few children to be had domestically are 7-to-16 or have severe developmental disabilities and health problems. With the system as it is, they might be better off in the care of a gay individual if that person was largely not romantically active. But the best thing to do is for Christian couples to go adopt some kids who need them. (They already do, of course; in vast numbers. But some of those disabled and older kids need some love, in a family with fathers and mothers.)

Posted by R.C. on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 10:28 PM (EST):

Another thing to consider is that marriage is several different things collected together under one term…and people who debate about “gay marriage” often use the word “marriage” without bothering to identify which of the meanings they’re using.

Indeed, some of their more persuasive arguments rely on the reader/hearer not realizing that they’re equivocating; that is, that they’re using the term one way in one part of their argument, then switching definitions and using it differently in another part, to produce conclusions which only seem to follow from the premises, but which actually don’t.

So if we’re to discuss this rationally, we need to be careful about what we mean by “marriage.”

Let’s hit the relevant points chronologically:

1. There is “Genesis 1 Marriage”: According to Jesus, divorce and polygamy were corruptions of marriage as God originally intended it, but “in the beginning it was not so.” He goes on to quote Genesis 1: Adam and Eve, the man and the woman told to “be fruitful and multiply.” Christians hold this to be a biological and a spiritual reality. Please note: a BIOLOGICAL reality. Christians are not denying that two men sometimes engage in mutual masturbation and like it, and manage to be close friends, besides. But they are saying that various known biological processes, not the least of them childbearing, are unique to this “marriage as originally designed”; that this is an objective feature of the human organism.

2. There is “cultural marriage”: Men married women and they formed families and produced offspring. Sometimes when a culture got very old and economically drained and times were tight and wealth was mostly in the power of a few men, those men were the only men who could afford to care for wives and raise children; and sometimes they could afford to raise several. Sometimes this persisted after economic times got better, if there was still enough income inequality that one man could support many women better than the nearest eligible bachelor could support one.

Much more rarely, when there was a huge shortage of men and of children and a culture was in danger of dying out, women would take many husbands and produce a large crop of children, and THIS state of affairs would sometimes persist past the point of crisis. At any rate, the structures of “cultural marriage” seem to have adapted the one-man, one-woman, life-long-bond structure in response to various pressures.

3. Another such pressure was the need to end or reduce warfare between neighboring tribes and nations. One can make a treaty…but only the post-Roman West ever put so much emphasis on words written on paper that such a document would bind behavior more than a moment. In the absence of any authority to enforce what the paper said, it was useless. It didn’t work; but what ancient peoples regularly discovered DID work was “marrying into the family.” The marital bond and the common children produced by it produced a family bond which tended to reduce the propensity of two groups to go to war with one another. People who were aware of this distinction used a different word for such arrangements: They were called “covenants.” A contract merely did business; but a “covenant” incorporated all the elements of a contract, but added requirements for regular renewal and reinforcement of the covenant, curses and punishments if it were violated, and—most importantly—it made the parties FAMILY.

It is important to note that “cultural marriage” is adaptive: It has no special claim of divine approval in the eyes of Christians, because it arises from the actions of fallen, sinful human beings acting sometimes honorably, and other times selfishly, and sometimes cruelly. If it has any claim to authority, it is not divine authority but rather the authority of “what works.” For we can see in human history that no civilizations have been long-lived and prosperous while varying much from the historical norms of marriage. We can guess that there is an evolutionary factor of some kind involved, on the national and cultural level: A weak family produces a weak society filled with emotionally-damaged citizens, which is easy prey for its neighbors.

So the lesson, there, is not to ignore the accumulated wisdom of all of human history about how societies work best. One ignores such things, usually not at one’s own peril, but at the peril of one’s grandchildren or great-grandchildren. (Is it because homosexuals and leftists have so few children, that they are so cavalier about rocking the boat?)

But, again, that is not the same as divine authority, in Christian eyes.

4. Then came the role of government. Now, what is distinctive about the role of government compared to all other social organizations is this: The government can kill, hurt, or imprison you. That is to say: It is the organization to which we normally grant a monopoly on the use of force.

I think anyone will agree that there are some matters where one may justly push or punch or even kill another man; but in most matters, force against one’s fellow-man is not morally authorized.

And I think anyone will agree that government ought to only use force in those situations where it is morally authorized.

And I think anyone will agree that government ought therefore to prosecute—that is, wield force against—persons who unjustly use force against other persons. For example, government ought to prosecute murderers, rapists, et cetera. And government ALSO ought to prosecute persons who unjustly use “intellectual force” (i.e., fraud, deceit) against others. And, contract violations are a form of fraud: You trick the person into entering a contract by letting them think you would keep up your end of the bargain, and then you don’t. Since that is a form of “intellectual forcing,” government has just moral authority to prosecute it.

This is important because by the time the state got involved, marriage was already viewed as a “covenant” because it had already gotten entangled with various issues (property rights, inheritance rights, the right to speak for a person when that person is too ill to speak for themselves) where a mere contract—a mere business deal without the accompanying moral sanction of family ties—was too weak and untrustworthy an instrument.

But the state found that it was economically helpful (and morally licit) to enforce even business contracts, and began doing so. Suddenly one didn’t have to wed a man’s sister to get him to honor an agreement; one needed only register the paper with the king and perhaps bribe a judge or two, and one could have the king’s soldiers arrest a contract-violator.

Adultery being the nasty heartbreaking thing it always was, and inheritance rights being the tricky things they always were, especially when illegitimate children were involved, it made sense for the state to begin codifying AS CIVIL CONTRACTS those pre-existing elements of the marriage covenant like “all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

Finally, many states realized that they wouldn’t long survive unless they learned from the wisdom of the most successful societies. Looking to their forebears, they realized, “First, we’d better have enough children to serve as soldiers and farmers and whatever other folk we need; and, second, those children had better be emotionally stable and healthy, otherwise, future generations will do nutty things and drive our society into a ditch.”

So, in addition to adding the forcible arm of the state to enforcing contracts which codified the existing cultural rights of property and inheritance which traditionally accompanied marriage, the state ALSO added another layer: Incentives for raising children in the ideal fashion, which (going by the wisdom of the centuries) looked to be man-woman-for-life.

TO SUMMARIZE:
(a.) There’s the divine-authority, Genesis 1 aspect;
(b.) There’s the cultural norms, evolutionary aspect;
(c.) There’s a layer of “bundled” civil contracts enforceable by the state;
(d.) There’s a layer of incentives provided by the state for encouraging the production of a sufficiently-numerous and sufficiently-healthy next generation of citizens.

NOW, to deal with “gay marriage”:

1. Is there any obligation for the state to offer to Person X a set of incentives it already offers to Person Y?

Answer: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In American law, if Person Y already fulfills the same criteria which made Person X eligible for those incentives, Person Y is eligible for the same incentives. (Otherwise, it’s an equal-protection issue.) But Person Y can also argue that the criteria which make Person X eligible are arbitrary and exist only for bigoted reasons; that is, that the state had “no compelling state interest” to establish those criteria.

...continued…

Posted by cowalker on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 10:18 PM (EST):

Karen posted on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 7:57 PM (EDT):
“The vote of the people defined marriage; legislative action without the consent of the governed is discriminatory to those who are not in the ‘favored’ group.”

So gay marriage is OK in Washington, where the majority of voters approved it in a referendum? I’m glad you agree.

Posted by Andi on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 10:01 PM (EST):

Do people really not see that this legislation would actively “help” between 2-5 percent of the population? That, said, many homosexual (couples and singles) do not seek the permanence of marriage, so we’re talking closer to 1-2%. Someone mentioned money talks…that’s not going to generate much revenue as far as marriage licenses go. People say that church’s won’t be affected…uh-huh…as soon as a couple wants to get married in a church that does not call homosexual couples “marriage” you just watch the lawsuits pile up. We are already seeing cake bakers, photographers and other service professionals being sued because they refused services to homosexual couples. This isn’t housing, or using public services, I’m talking about small business being sued because they “reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” It’s scary stuff, that basically if someone wants you to perform a service you don’t feel comfortable doing they can sue you, ruin your good name and your business.

Posted by ChestertoniansUnite on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 6:57 PM (EST):

Ann, that’s the most ignorant post of the day! The Church & its faithful don’t (& shouldn’t) care if the world “evolves” with the times. By Baptism & faith in Christ, we are called not to “evolve with the times” but to be faithful witnesses to the Eternal (& unchanging) Word of God, which is Christ Himself (Logos, “Word made flesh” in John’s Gospel). The Truth (Christ) can’t not “evolve”, the Truth by its own Divine Nature can NOT change (or “evolve”), so quit trying to change it. Truth (which has been Revealed to us) is not subjective & relative, Truth is eternal. By the Holy Spirit, go to confession, repent of your sinful worldview, run towards Christ, & “Sin no more” (words from Jesus).

Posted by Karen on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 6:57 PM (EST):

Oh, and, Ann, gov’t creating legislation in favor of one specific group is discrimination against opposite sex couples. The vote of the people defined marriage; legislative action without the consent of the governed is discriminatory to those who are not in the “favored” group.
See other comments above.

Posted by Karen on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 6:51 PM (EST):

And, Larkin:
The state and any legislation it produces is not based on people’s emotions….that’s not the business of govt.

Posted by Karen on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 6:45 PM (EST):

Ronald, the Catholic church cares so much about marriage because it cares for children and the present (and future) societies. Children do come from a male and female, yes? Does that not answer the question of where nature lies, and thus, the best scenario for as many children as is possible? (because, yes, the dismal state of marriage makes “ideal” a tough challenge).
You admit that it opens the door for more denigration- is this best for children?
Are same-sex couples the same as opposite-sex couples? And I’m not talking about value…are they equal situations? Exactly the same? How can two such different situations be argued into be the same?
Another point: if the state favors same sex couples by legislating their status (I’m not talking rights or value), is that not discriminating against heterosexual couples?
Civil unions? Why not?
Equal rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Absolutely!
Redefining what has already been defined? What “slippery slope” does that take us down? What else will we have to legislatively redefine in the future?

Posted by Ann on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 5:55 PM (EST):

I completely agree with Mark Luxford;Tammy,you can choose to be chaste with other if you still want to(if not,educate yourself thouroughly with Planned Parenthood website on how to protect yourself)or please yourself-you’re an adult after all.
It’s time for all those against same-sex marriage to stop deluding your selves and pretend that all of us are idiots-it’s dicrimination plain and simple.It will be a benefit to the economy to allow the marriages to take place.Actually,the couples have to register with the state for a marriage license before they have a ceremony in a church.The fees generated by allowing the marriages to take place will generate revenue for the state.The economy will generate jobs and supply and demand because of all the planning involved.You can’t tell someone that they can’t marry someone(unless abusive or something criminal is afoot) so let them fall in love and marry in a church-it is evolution.Evolution is something that God has created,and the church is powerless to stop,so it is to be accepted and move on to more important.If Pope Francis was humble enough to wash the feet of prisoners and a Muslim woman,what will protest about when he washes the feet of a same-sex couple,transgendered individual,or a parent or some other member of the LGBT community?Nothing -so hush up on the matter,pray that the same-sex marriages last “until death do they part”.

Posted by EJ Weber on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 5:32 PM (EST):

Veronica Guerra, wonderful commentary! You’ve so beautifully and succinctly laid out the argument for the natural law and against what I’ve come to call “surreal marriage”, euphemistically called same sex or gay marriage, I do not want to add or inadvertently detract from it by commenting any more about it.
Larkin: “I think the lopsidedly male church leaders focus on thése their pet areas because it makes their job so easy.” The only thing lopsided is your logic and inability to reason.
Mark Luxford: not “the evolution of marriage”, but de-evolution; we are in digressing not advancing.
cowalker: (Skywalker might be more befitting, as you are indeed out there in the Star Wars zone) “Instead there was a backlash against excessive zeal to discriminate against same sex couples.”
One cannot discriminate in marriage against homosexuals because as Veronica eloquently explains, it is a matter of natural law. Natural law begets unalienable rights, unalienable rights the common law, common law so-called civil rights. The reason, for example, slavery was wrong and will always be is that it violates natural law, just as the enactment of laws that codified discrimination of an entire race violates natural law. Homosexual, surreal marriage violates the natural law and therefore should never be codified into common law or made a civil right because it is a law against the natural law - in essence, “a house divided” that should and cannot stand.
Ronald Bruce Gies: “[Give] others the same chance to denigrate [marriage].” Don’t be so harsh on your “fellow heterosexuals” because I hate to tell you, attorneys have already proceeded with divorce cases in states that instituted surreal marriage, i.e. Hawaii. Those attorneys have forewarned their colleagues in other states that soon may be added to the ignoble list of practitioners of homosexual marriage, be prepared. It’s taken homosexuals millenarian less time than heterosexuals to denigrate the institution they only began to seize a relatively few short years ago.
Rex King: “[My] morals are better than yours” is not the basis of the argument. Truth is as God is Truth. God’s truths are not more or less one better than another, but each exists in pure perfection. It’s not a question of morals, but truth against lies. If natural law is born of Divine Law, and it is, then to argue the case in terms you prefer, perhaps under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, reduces marriage to the equivalent of say a bale of wheat.

Posted by Veronica Guerra on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 5:28 PM (EST):

@Larkin, A much beloved theologian called Cardinal Henri de Lubac once said: “It’s not a question of adapting Christianity to men, but of adapting men to Christ” and let us remember that our Lord Jesus Christ challenged us to: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” Matthew 5:48 and later our Lord said “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this cause man shall leave his father and mother; and cleave to his wife” Mark 10:6-7 Since same-sex marriage violates the natural moral order established by God, it can never be morally permissible. It’s also important to keep in mind that the Catholic Church does not impose morality on anyone. She proposes principles rooted in objective truth and natural law oriented toward the good of all society. The Church’s teachings are not based on popular opinion. Although our Church has great compassion for people that suffer from same-sex attraction, as faithful Catholics we can never support a re-definition of marriage that enshrines into law the principle that mothers and fathers are interchangeable or irrelevant, and that marriage is essentially an institution about adults, not children; if this was the case marriage would mean nothing more than giving adults recognition and benefits in their most significant relationship. God Bless !

Posted by R.C. on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 5:24 PM (EST):

First, children have the following natural, unalienable, human rights:

1. to know the identity of their biological father and to contact him if he is living;

2. to know the identity of their biological mother and to contact her if she is living;

3. to be mothered by their biological mother (or in the case of her incapacity, by another woman to whom she or her representative have delegated that responsibility; i.e., an adoptive mother);

4. to be fathered by their biological father (or in the case of his incapacity, by another man to whom he or his representative has delegated that responsibility; i.e., an adoptive father);

5. to be, for want of a better term, “family-ed” by (raised in a household consisting of) all their siblings, with visits by grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.

The problem with America (not the only one, of course, but the one most relevant to this conversation) is that the founders were mostly concerned with the unalienable rights of adults, but neglected to enumerate these additional unalienable rights of children. They probably assumed that nobody would ever be so ignorant as to be unaware of them.

But these are the rights of a child. When that child is deprived of a father’s fathering or a mother’s mothering through misadventure, it’s a tragedy, but not a crime.

But when an adult makes voluntary decisions which deprive that child of his rights for the sake of their own romantic inclinations or self-actualization, they are selfishly committing a wicked human-rights violation with an innocent victim.

This is why there ought not be no-fault divorce in any marriage with children. And, it’s why there ought not be legalized gay adoption or legalized anonymous sperm or egg donation.

This is, of course, second to abortion as the huge institutionalized civil-rights violation of our era. If abortion is another travesty comparable to slavery, then our refusal to defend the unalienable human rights of children is comparable to segregation.

Posted by ChestertoniansUnite on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 5:24 PM (EST):

Larkin, run to your nearest Bible & Catechism & open them up. Of course Jesus commands us to love one another (duh), but he NEVER commands us to “open our hearts” to SIN! That would be to go against the will of his Father, which would be disgusting in the eyes of Jesus. He says repent “& sin no more.” Jesus nver says “your sins are forgiven, now continue living your sinful lifestyles.” BTW, the Church is already doing both- teaching Truth (thus speaking against falsehoods) & providing compassion & charity to the oppressed. Just because you don’t become active enough in your parish & global Church to see it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Why are sins sins? The answer is long & you can look into Bible/Catechism. The Bible (both New & Old Testaments) make it clear that homosexuality in particular is an abomination. We don’t get to choose which sins are sins & which ones aren’t, Only God can. And all the Church is doing is leading people away from sin so that they may grow closer to Christ in following God’s Perfect Will. You have a wrong understanding of Love, which is the nature of God, that which flows from the Eternal Word of Christ. Love doesn’t & will never mean the acceptance of sin. No, further Christ’s Love in the Cross demands our repentance of all sin & an embracing of God’s perfect Will.

Posted by Larkin on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:53 PM (EST):

I know about the natural law and the ancient history of marriage. But answer me this: When so many homosexual couples love each other so deeply and remain together for life in committed relationships and who grieve with the same pain that heterosexuals do when their partner dies, and when they adopt children and love them with all their hearts and provide them a warm secure loving family, then how can anyone conclude that what you are witnessing is evil and from hell? That is complete nonsense! What you are seeing is Love living in these lives. So please open your heart and love them the way Jesus commanded us to. Instead of all this condemning, why don’t we Catholics concentrate on the caring issues Jesus enumerated as THE KEYS to attaining Heaven? (Matthew 25, 35-36.) Yes, these loving persons in these loving families are our neighbors. They are working out their lives just like we are and they deserve our love.

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:39 PM (EST):

Yes Mormons wrongly believe we can become Gods of Universes ourselves.

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:38 PM (EST):

Why is our culture wanting to become God in important issues involving life & death instead of wanting to be godly & submit ourselves to His Perfect Will? It pains our Blessed Mother (the submissive & obedient woman full of God’s grace) so much to even gaze at the world & see what we have let our culture become. Our Blessed beautiful Mother is crying with sorrow right now! Pray God may grant us Christ’s Divine Mercy for us sinners, Oh Blessed Mary! God, make us more like your only Begotten Son, help us carry our crosses like Him & quit listening to “angel” of darkness & sin.

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:34 PM (EST):

Also, IVF is unnatural because it leaves the natural act of sex out of equation & you end up with surrogate “mothers”, dead embyros, among other things. The grave mistake Lucifer did was wanting to BECOME God himself, instead of obeying God’s will to allow us to be more LIKE God but not actually become a god (like Mormons teach). Jesus (although both man & God) was the opposite: “Father, your will-not mine- be done.”

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:33 PM (EST):

Also, IVF is unnatural because it leaves the natural act of sex out of equation & you end up with surrogate “mothers”, dead embyros, among other things. The grave mistake Lucifer did was wanting to BECOME God himself, instead of obeying God’s will to allow us to be more LIKE God but not actually become a god (like Mormons teach). Jesus (although both man & God) was the opposite: “Father, your will-not mine- be done.” Why is our culture wanting to become God in important issues involving life & death instead of wanting to be godly & submit ourselves to His Perfect Will? It pains our Blessed Mother (the submissive & obedient one) so much to even gaze at the world & see what we have let our culture become. Our Blessed beautiful Mother is crying with sorrow right now! Pray God may grant us Christ’s Divine Mercy for us sinners, Oh Blessed Mary!

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:32 PM (EST):

Oops sorry I meant Jesus (both man & God) literally gave His life for His Father’s will

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:19 PM (EST):

Also, IVF is unnatural because it leaves the natural act of sex out of equation & you end up with surrogate “mothers”, dead embyros, among other things. The grave mistake Lucifer did was wanting to BECOME God himself, instead of obeying God’s will to allow us to be more LIKE God but not actually become a god (like Mormons teach). Jesus (although both man & human) was the opposite: “Father, your will-not mine- be done.” Why is our culture wanting to become God in important issues involving life & death instead of wanting to be godly & submit ourselves to His Perfect Will? It pains our Blessed Mother (the submissive & obedient one) so much to even gaze at the world & see what we have let our culture become. Our Blessed beautiful Mother is crying with sorrow right now! Pray God may grant us Christ’s Divine Mercy for us sinners, Oh Blessed Mary!

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:08 PM (EST):

Gays say we have IVF (invitro fertilization). One, you still need both a man’s sperm & a woman’s egg. And most importantly, IVF is immoral since it is extra-marital (which is adulterous, read the Ten Commandments), unnatural & leads to problems with abortion. Do we really want to leave in a world where most of the children are born in Laboratory testubes & petri dishes? That’s sick & unnatural. Why are we always wanting to find new ways to disobey God’s will. Let’s be more like His Son Jesus (who literally gave up his for Our Father’s will even when He was afraid) unless we want to end up becoming Lucifer (the rebellious ugly one).

Posted by Rodrigo Guerra on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:07 PM (EST):

@Rex King: Your infertility argument is fatally flawed because it concerns two relatively rare situations: younger infertile couples and elderly couples. If marriage is about children, why does the state allow the first group to marry? The reason is that while we know every same-sex couple is infertile, we don’t generally know that about opposite-sex couples.

Some suggest forcing every engaged couple to undergo mandatory fertility testing before marriage. But this would be outrageous. Besides being prohibitively expensive, it would also be an egregious invasion of privacy, all to detect an extremely small minority of couples.Another problem is that infertility is often misdiagnosed. Fertile couples may be wrongly denied marriage under such a scenario. This is never the case for same-sex couples, who cannot produce children together.

But why does the government allow elderly couples to marry? It’s true that most elderly couples cannot reproduce (though women as old as 70 have been known to give birth). However, these marriages are so rare that it’s simply not worth the effort to restrict them. Also, elderly marriages still feature the right combination of man and woman needed to make children. Thus they provide a healthy model for the rest of society, and are still capable of offering children a home with a mother and a father.

Real marriage is the life-long, sexual union of one man and woman. In the absence of any coherent alternative definition there is no reason to redefine marriage. It just happens to be the case that while marriage is intended for adults who can create children, it unintentionally benefits infertile opposite sex couples as well. Critics are liable to go into a frenzy and say this is unfair and ridiculous. I would caution them against such a strategy because the exact same objection can be launched against same sex marriage. God Bless !

Posted by lroy on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:00 PM (EST):

I think the argument is going to go further than whether same sex couples should be married. Where do you draw the line? Multiple spouses? Marrying your pet? It is a very slippery slope that, like abortion, may create further problems for decades to come. I will support same sex marriage when I can marry my cat.

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 4:00 PM (EST):

Marriage (man & woman) has been so universal since the beginning of human existence (look at the Ancient civilizations of India, China, Americas, Africa, Europe & Arabia). It’s purpose is to procreate, which biologically can only occur between the sexual union of one man & woman. Even if a couple is infertile or old, it’s just an exception not a rule, and the possibility to procreate always remains (just look at the elderly people in India today having babies or Abraham & Sarah, from which nations where born). But in homosexual relations, there is absolutely no possibility of procreation, therefore the state does not recognize it. Do gay couples love each other? That’s besides the point! Kids in friendships love each other… should the government start recognizing & sanctioning kid friendships? No!

Posted by RMW on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 3:57 PM (EST):

It is time to retire the ‘slippery slope’ as a logical fallacy as it has been proven to be true in many cases. In the case of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood - what ‘began’ as a plea for protection for mothers, women and children from the horrors of cruel husbands, fathers and unsafe medical procedures has now become the single largest source of abortions and nothing more - not mammograms, referrals to safe haven programs or health care, just contraception and abortions.

The same will become true of the efforts on this front. Everyone ‘for’ SSM tells you it won’t turn into a legal fight for polygamy, child-adult relationships but the chatter on-line seems to indicate otherwise as pedophiles seek some acceptance for normalcy.

And to compare ‘arranged’ marriages to the current battle as a sign of the ‘evolution’ of marriage is a stretch as we really did need to grow in our understanding of sociology, law and so much more.

But - no matter how far we come in understanding each other the truth that same sex couples cannot - ever, never - join with each other in a biologically compatible manner in a way to procreate shows the inherent dysfunction of the relationship. Feelings aside - we can love something, someone as much as we want but that does not mean we should or that God intended it that way.

And how we treat each other should never be defined by what we love and how we actually feel. A healthy, holy love (agape) should be able to exist without sex (eros) as that is how each of us is loved by God. Everyone is loved by God and therefore should be loved by us - again, agape love - but that does not mean we have a right to marriage or anything else except the love of God.

Posted by Chesterton on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 3:44 PM (EST):

Excellent article. Larkin, homesexuality will never be true love. Why? Because it’s intrinsically sinful in its nature (therefore is disobedient to God (who is Love), which makes one more like Lucifer). Love is not a ‘60s morally relativistic whatever-you-want-it-to-mean word; Love is the Eternal Word of Christ (the Logos).

Posted by Rex King on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 3:41 PM (EST):

If marriage is about reproduction, then infertile couples would not be allowed to marry. Ability or desire to create offspring has never been a qualification for marriage. George Washington, often referred to as “the Father of Our Country,” did not have children with his wife Martha Custis, and neither did four other married US presidents.
.
Money talks now; empathy develops over time. Americans who perceive gay marriage as a deviant from the traditional family portrait and even as an infringement upon their values are entitled to feel as such. Just as their argument may revolve around persuading the public to recognize their cause as being in the moral right, marriage equality advocates who often use the same exact approach are merely inviting themselves to a stalemate. The “my morals are better than yours” argument is hardly effective. On the contrary, a strong economic case for either argument is a swifter route to an agreement — albeit an uncompassionate or grudging agreement.

Posted by Scott W. on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 3:08 PM (EST):

Infatuation coupled with disordered sexual contact is not love.

Posted by Veronica Guerra on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 2:07 PM (EST):

Although I have compassion for people that suffer from same-sex attraction, calling something marriage does not make it marriage. Marriage has always been a covenant between a man and a woman which is by its nature ordered toward the procreation and education of children and the unity and wellbeing of the spouses.

The promoters of same-sex “marriage” propose something entirely different. They propose the union between two men or two women. This denies the self-evident biological, physiological, and psychological differences between men and women which find their complementarity in marriage. It also denies the specific primary purpose of marriage: the perpetuation of the human race and the raising of children.

Two entirely different things cannot be considered the same thing.

Moreover, same-sex marriage violates Natural Law. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It is a relationship rooted in human nature and thus governed by natural law.

Natural law’s most elementary precept is that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” By his natural reason, man can perceive what is morally good or bad for him. Thus, he can know the end or purpose of each of his acts and how it is morally wrong to transform the means that help him accomplish an act into the act’s purpose.

Any situation which institutionalizes the circumvention of the purpose of the sexual act violates natural law and the objective norm of morality.

Being rooted in human nature, natural law is universal and immutable. It applies to the entire human race, equally. It commands and forbids consistently, everywhere and always. Same-sex marriage does not serve the common good of society and must be opposed.

Posted by Moneyistheroot on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 2:07 PM (EST):

Hence why this is the privatisation of the family; children will be sold and babies traded for financial gain.

Posted by Moneyistheroot on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 2:05 PM (EST):

Sorry Larkin,
The Catholic Church has the correct definition of what marriage is. It is easily termed ‘parenthood’. To ‘marry’ is to consummate to found a family is to conceive. If the definition of marriage changes, the only part of the definition which changes is to ‘marry’ but to found a family will then be provided illegitimately by the state. This breaks the right of the child to the physical reality that they are permanently and exclusively bound to the body of their own parent who has sold them on. This is criminal and not loving in the slightest. It treats humans as a thing to be sold.

Posted by Larkin on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 1:48 PM (EST):

I support same sex marriage because first and foremost it originates from and grows as Love. God is first and foremost all about love. Wherever a deep and heart felt Love is shared between two people for life how can it originate from anywhere else but God. All the focus on children denigrates God’s paramount command that we Love one another. It’s time for Catholics to tell the men, who are supposedly in chargé of Jesus’ church, to serve the poor, work for justice, stop war, but leave the realm of sex - as just one expression of Love - to God. I think the lopsidedly male church leaders focus on thése their pet areas because it makes their job so easy. Please do the hard work Christ gave you.

Posted by Mark on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 1:44 PM (EST):

I wonder if, perhaps, we might consider the repercussions of redefining marriage apart from the moral or ethical consequences (though I don’t dispute these intended or unintended effects).

If we legislate to broaden the definition, might we not be creating an ambiguous precedent that will compel us to continually broaden the parties to whom the law applies? Historically laws are generally broadened in scope, not restricted, such as in the case of the legal definition of personhood arising from Rowe v. Wade. In that decision the Court sought only to answer the legal question put to it, that being if federal funds may be, or must be used to provide abortion services. The question put to the Court had nothing at all to do with any person’s right to free and unfettered access to abortion. Since that time, however, the terms created by the Court to answer the original challenge (for example, creating a definition of “personhood” and the legal fiction of a trimester)have been broadened in scope, with the consequence being also the extension of entitlements under the law to persons not originally named or intended.

For example, if we enshrine a fundamental right to marry for those persons who are able to understand the laws requirements, might we not then be compelled to broaden the law’s scope to include what we do not now intend, perhaps for example, marriage between adults and adolescents(given that the adolescent is of sufficient age to understand the requirements of marriage and sufficiently mature to freely choose to enter into marriage, perhaps with parental permission)? Presently minors are permitted to marry in many states, if they have their parent’s consent to do so. Yet, in a legal situation not dissimilar, parental consent is not always required for free and unfettered access by minor children to services such as abortion and contraceptives. It seems then that a well-enshrined principle such as parental rights can be freely reinterpreted based on the extension of a minor’s right in other areas. Might not, then, the legal precedent influence future interpretations of marriage, broadly defined?

It seems that we are often attempting to debate important moral issues facing our society on standards not shared by all parties. Might it not be more effective, at least when trying to persuade legislators and our justices, to use the force of legal precedent instead of appealing only to arguments that have, at best, only faithfully Catholic or authentically Christian foundations?

Posted by cowalker on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 1:41 PM (EST):

How dare those gay people presume to redefine marriage?

How quickly we forget what was going on way back in 2000.

From a story in the New York Times on Oct 21, 2000:
“Nebraskans will vote this Election Day on the country’s most sweeping effort to bar gay unions, a proposed amendment to the state Constitution that not only bans gay marriages but also declares same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships invalid.”

“Supporters of the proposed amendment have been helped by a coalition of national Roman Catholic, Mormon and evangelical groups and out-of- state contributors. Less than 6 percent of the more than $500,000 donated to support the amendment has come from Nebraska residents.”

So ironic. Even a dozen years ago the religious opponents of same sex marriage might have been able to get behind a movement to separate marriage into a legal institution called a “civil union” and a religious institution called “marriage.” The state would have handled the “civil union” aspect, and the church of the couple’s choice would have handled the “marriage” aspect. I know this wouldn’t have been ideal for those with religious objections to same-sex relationships, but it would have avoided redefining marriage, and made it clear that the legal contract was one hundred percent secular and state-controlled.

But no, the religious opponents of same sex marriage preferred to deprive same sex couples of any legal protection whatsoever. That was their goal whenever there was an opportunity to allow some small legal accomodation. In their eyes same sex couples didn’t deserve any recognition at all, and opponents assumed they could continue to count on popular prejudice against gay people to reinforce their position. There would be no compromise.

Instead there was a backlash against excessive zeal to discriminate against same sex couples. Public opinion on this issue has evolved with amazing speed. I believe it’s fueled in part by indignation against past and continuing mean-spiritedness exhibited by religious types toward gay people since forever.

Posted by Kathleen on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 1:27 PM (EST):

BobL & Emma,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments & God bless!

Posted by cheeriosinpocket on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 1:03 PM (EST):

Great article…Thank you Dr. Lee.

Interesting comments. Mark Luxford, your comments fall under the “it’s all relative” way of thinking or lack thereof. Dr. Lee articulates what marriage is quite clearly. Additionally, I believe I could name numerous relatives who did not marry out of love for one another…perhaps one of the two felt they were in love, however, the other basically wanted to marry to have children. They actually called that group committed to each other and the raising of their children. They were quite numerous prior to Margaret Sangor’s evil doings with birth control. They are those that were married 50 years or more.

We have moved into an amoral approach toward life. Marriage is between one man and one woman. It always has been, and it always will be. Anything else to be considered is a perversion not an evolution. People do not marry because they are in love and want to spend the rest of their lives together. That’s hollywood’s version. If it were that simple, then we wouldn’t see the divorce rate where it is. If it were merely 2 who fall in love and want to spend the rest of their lives together, why marry—why not cohabitate and skip the whole idea of getting married? Plenty of people are out there right now cohabitating, so why get married?

The state does not create marriage but promotes it because the only way a state continues is through procreation, which we all know is a priority or the state ceases to exist. How utterly ridiculous, absurd, ludicrous, that the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing any case on redefining marriage, and is going to take months to write up ascent/descent decisions on which any rationally thinking person could answer in one minute. How utterly perverted hollywood has become that through media they have convinced or at least shamed into the thought that marriage isn’t only for a man and a woman.

Kathleen, you have much Wisdom. The hollywood version is shallow. The real version is love is not a feeling that can come or go. Love is a choice, day in and day out, through better or worse…no matter how one feels, it is love when the lover holds the beloved and their needs above their own. Love is sacrificial. Love should never be 50/50. Love should strive for 100/100. Those are the relationships we should promote, support, and award with marriage. Anything less is hollywood…a perversion which plays on feelings vs. reason.

Also, my great-grandmother was 13 when she married and 14 when she began having children. My grandmother was 15 when she got married and 16 when she began having children. My Mom had aunts and uncles born after her. Marriage is commitment.

Tammy, you are an inspiration! 40 plus years chaste! I truly believe that if God had intended a Godly man for you (at least up until now), you would have met and married. You are never, never, never alone. You are fulfilling your vocation, (at least up until now) you are single for the Lord. A HIGH calling during these times of such darkness. So many women need to hear how to stay chaste. So many men need to hear how to respect women and desire their chastity above their own desires. I hope you are giving talks or somehow helping others to be steadfast in purity. May God bless you with grace upon grace this day and always!

Posted by Emma on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 12:22 PM (EST):

Speaking of arranged marriages, my husband and I arranged our own marriage. Casual acquaintances who became good friends, but there honestly was no romantic inclinations between us. As friends, we saw each other at their worst many times and through numerous dating disasters. After one shared a particularly hurtful episode the other suggested that we should just give it up and marry each other. Through the following months, we spoke of the definition of marriage, studied church teachings on marriage and explored the definition of love. We then committed to actively practicing and living out a loving relationship with each other. It was by modern definition not at all romantic, quite the opposite. Funny thing happened tho ‘: once we were married, once we continued to ACTIVELY love each other, the romance flourished! What a special blessing it is to be in love with and married to my best friend! We’ve, as a society, substituted romance and sexual attraction for true love. Fed by a marketing machine that tells us we’re worthy only if we buy their products and only if we use them for sexual conquests. Most of our peers thought we were crazy except one. This particular young woman is from India and is herself in an arranged marriage (yes they do still exist) and like the poster above said, she was given the option of turning him down, but, as I’ve come to see, marriage is not about “falling in love ” it’s about a lifetime commitment to another, sharing the day to day challenges and successes. For that you need to choose consciously just who it is you’re going to love. I’ve heard several people say, “You can’t choose who you fall in love with “. That may be true if hormones are running amok, but you can choose who you love. Love is active.

Posted by BobL on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 12:21 PM (EST):

Kathleen, that is the problem: marriage seen as a romantic ideal meant for the “happiness” and sexual fulfillment of the adults, not a lifelong commitment with the likelihood of the gift of children.

Seen the first way, same-sex couples can argue for the same “right”. But seen as a way to become something more and to share in God’s creation—literally!—and be responsible for that creation—again, literally!—same sex couples BY NATURE cannot be the same, as they have to rely on artificial methods to “get” a family.

Your example reminds me of the song from “Fiddler on the Roof” that Tevye and Golde sing to each other: “Do You Love Me?”. The responsibility of finding a good and holy spouse was given to the parents and matchmaker, but that does not mean that love (strong, dutiful, loyal, joyful, etc.) cannot grow.

Posted by Stilbelieve on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 12:07 PM (EST):

Tammy - when I was a younger man, I used to sketch attractive women’s faces from photographs as a hobby. At about the age of 25 I realized something - I realized a woman’s true beauty doesn’t really even begin to show until she reaches 40, at the earliest. Let me assure you that there is a lot of living left to do after your 40s; and with internet sites like e-Harmony and Catholic singles there are ways to find decent men. My wife and I found each other on e-H, well past our 40s.

Posted by R. Cantu on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 12:00 PM (EST):

Same Sex marriage law says nothing about gay, lesbian etc. orientation. The law says “Same Sex” couples will be treated the same (as man/woman marriages)under the law. I see this (S.S.M) as a prelude to older adults preying on younger adults or children under the pretext of possible marital relationship. “Marriage” between a man and woman is our best hope for healthy children and a strong society.

Posted by Ronald Bruce Gies on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 11:53 AM (EST):

IMPORTANT DIALOGUE
I think this is a great conversation to have, so please make no mistake about my comments and questions.

The comments about “Marriage is a multidimensional union” is an interesting topic in particular. In Humanae Vitae, however, the logic used by the Church links sexual behavior inextricably with procreation in marriage. It’s a very narrowly constructed argument; and any non-procreative behavior is very narrowly regulated as to outcome. I don’t necessarily agree with the logic, but it’s taught with great frequency.

Let me ask the broader question, “why does our Church really care about this issue so much?” It’s receiving massive resources and attention throughout the Church (clerics and laity, alike). I would have thought - before all this became a popular topic for post-mass conversations - that the Church would have been the first to recognize that marriage and the Sacrament of Matrimony have little/nothing to do with each other. The state isn’t trying to mandate sacramental requirements.

The state (specifically, certain individual states) is trying to equalize rights across the population. The only thing that I see that would not be present in a same-sex marriage is the procreation of a child of both members of that union. They would exercise civil and property rights, raise children, be mutually obligated and generally contribute to the stable society, in which the state has a clear interest.

As to the slippery slope argument that I hear frequently elsewhere (i.e. societal decay), the only group that has proven (so far) that it cannot uphold the dignity of marriage are my fellow heterosexuals. Why shouldn’t we give others the same chance to denigrate it.

Posted by Kathleen on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 11:02 AM (EST):

I’m actually a descendant of a 12 year old bride & an arranged marriage, so I kind of take exception to comments along those lines, but of course in this day & time things are different & the analogy probably applies in most cases.
I think folks have misconceptions about arranged marriage.It can be about property, but more often it involves the couple’s consent & the emphasis is on finding a decent, sincere spouse through a matchmaker or family members.It sure beats meeting posers in bars & on internet sites.
By the way, the greatgrandmother who married at 12, found herself at 31, a widowed, war refugee with 9 children living in a one room shack in the wilderness.Every child survived, despite desperate conditions & went on to become outstanding members of their communities.
Truthfully, I think the whole Western emphasis on romantic love & sexual fulfillment has led to a shallow understanding of marriage.There’s much more to it.

Posted by Tammy on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 11:02 AM (EST):

God never promised any of us marriage.
It’s hard to accept, but it’s true.
As a 40+ single woman who has worked hard to live chastely (apparently, that’s very unappealing to men) and searched high and low and far and wide for a Godly man who respects Godly women… I am alone, alone alone.
.
One doesn’t earn marriage by being pretty, or funny or sweet or smart or holy or free from debt.
If marriages were granted on merit… I’d be so married.
but people who don’t really deserve great husbands have them.
.
No, God never promised us marriage.
which helps to sway my disappointment but not much.

Posted by Mark Luxford on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 11:00 AM (EST):

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, Andrew. I see forcing a child to marry someone of your choosing or refusing to allow a child to marry until the prospective groom ponied up enough cash as being far more than just procedures. I see them as being fundamental to the marriages in those days. I see marriage procedures as involving things like marrying in a church or going before a judge to marry.

Posted by Andrew on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 10:43 AM (EST):

Mark, you are correct in noting a sort of evolution—but none of those changes altered the fundamental nature of marriage, only the procedure. The push for same-sex “marriage” absolutely is attempting to alter the fundamental nature of marriage.

Posted by Mark Luxford on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 10:37 AM (EST):

I see this issue as being another step in the evolution of marriage. In the past arranged marriages were the norm. The father of the bride saw her as being property; thus the need for the prospective groom to provide the father with a suitable dowry to compensate him for the loss of his property. We’ve moved past those days to an era where couples marry out of love for one another and a desire to spend the rest of their days together. I believe the next step in the evolution is to see the gay couple as being simply people who love one another and want to spend the rest of their days together.

Posted by Moneyistheroot on Tuesday, Apr 2, 2013 10:26 AM (EST):

Why has nobody really discussed that this is a fluffy disguise for the privatisation of the family? Who are going to be the service providers whereby children are traded and provided by the state since the right to found a family exists within marriage. The fertility industry? A great boost to the economy, shame about the commodification of children though.

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